


Homesick at Space Camp (The Break's Over)

by reading_is_in



Series: Bandom Space Opera AU [2]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 14:14:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6910534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reading_is_in/pseuds/reading_is_in
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the events of Star Struck, Patrick and Joe have settled into life as part of Pete's crew of miscreants. A mysterious call from Brendon alerts them to trouble on Earth Colony 6, a privately owned settlement planet of BL/IND incorporate. It seems that the conglomeration's brainwashing techniques are stirring up dissidents in the desert, and a link from the past enticing our heroes to investigate. Crossover with the Danger Days Universe.</p><p>This is a sequel to Star Struck (Or, Paramount Made Me Change the Name of This Fanfic) and will make approximately 0 sense if you haven't read that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One of the best things about the new liner is that Pete and Patrick get a bedroom to themselves, making longer missions and patrols more tolerable. The privilege of a private bedroom, of course, comes with the penalty of a shitload of commentary from the entire crew:

“Goddam walls better be soundproof,” says Travie, Pete’s most reliable pilot and one of his oldest friends, so Patrick’s heard. “I don’t need none of y’alls activities scarring my mental concentration when I’m working.”

“Why don’t _I_ get a private bedroom?” Bill protests, one hip jutted petulantly against the bridge’s control panel. “I did most of the negotiation for this ship.”

“Bill, please, your bedrooms have to the least private areas known to humankind,” Maja says, and Bill reaches down to clap his hands over Sisky’s ears before admitting,

“True. But when you think about it that does mean I need more room than most people. Plus, look at those two, they’re fun-sized, you could get both in a military bunk with room for a threesome.”

“I hate all of you,” says Patrick, eyes down on the navigation panel. His face turns its reliable shade of red. “Shut up.” Possibly not his best-ever comeback, but back in the Fleet, he never had to deal with public discussion of his sex life. (Which may or may not be due to the fact that back in the Fleet, he never _had_ a sex life, but that’s beside the point.) 

He’s not prepared for this. 

“Hey let me do that,” Sisky leans over and peers at the navigation panel: “I know this system really well, I grew up near.”

“Whatever,” Patrick puts his hands up. “I’ll be –“

“In your bunk?” asks Bill sweetly and flutters his eyelashes, so Patrick gives him the finger while getting up and heading, admittedly, for the Captain’s quarters he’s sharing with Pete. It’s a smallish ship, basic gunmetal grey walls and small utilitarian viewing windows. Travie and Bill have been talking about a paint job, to Patrick’s mild alarm, but haven’t gotten around to it yet). Patrick’s only other option is the tiny mess room, and he really doesn’t feel like socializing. As he approaches their room, he realizes the door is open a crack and he can hear Pete talking into the vidcom:

“ – but no. It’s just not the sort of thing we get involved in.” A pause. “Because. Like I said, I don’t believe in interventionism. That was a different thing. There’s a difference between sabotage and, like, structural intervention. Okay. Okay. Well if you can if you want but it won’t change anything. Good. Talk to you soon. Bye Brendon.”  


Patrick blinks. They’ve kept in contact with Brendon and Ryan, Patrick’s former cadets, pretty regularly over the past two years, ever since Brendon was kidnapped by McKracken cult and Patrick got discharged from Earth Fleet. But conversations are typically light and social: there’s a bit of an unspoken rule that they don’t discuss Pete’s ‘business’. It sounds like Pete and Brendon had been skirting pretty close to the edge of that rule.

“Hey,” says Patrick, opening the door.

“Oh, hey!” Pete turns round and grins. It’s been two years, and his stupid grin still lights something up in Patrick every time he sees it. Pete isn’t quite what you’d call classically handsome – his mouth is slightly too big for his face, and his eyebrows kind of do their own thing at least 50% of the time, but there’s something magnetically attractive about him, enough that the intersystem gossip rags regularly feature him in their ‘top ten eligible bad boys’ or similar nonsense lists. Pete keeps a couple of the spreads pinned to the wall above their bunk. It’s incredibly annoying and nowhere near as hilarious as Pete thinks.

So it turns out Patrick has a jealous streak. So what.

“How’s Brendon?” Patrick asks now.

“Fine, happy. Kind of hyper and in love with Ryan Ross, you know, the usual,” Pete waves a hand and subtly angles his face away from Patrick. It’s a massive tell. 

“Sounded like a pretty intense chat.” Patrick’s not pushing. He knows when to push, and when to hang out and let Pete volunteer information. Pete wants to tell him – he can tell by the way his hands are twitching in his lap and the way he’s looking at the wall and then sneaking looks back at Patrick over his shoulder. Patrick sits on the bunk and takes off his shoes, not looking back at Pete.

One, two, three…

“You been keeping up with the news out of colony 6 lately?” Pete blurts. 

“Not…especially,” Patrick says. Colony 6 is a run of the mill terraforming project, one of earth’s earlier expansions. It’s a desert planet owned by private investors, heavily industrialized cities breaking up the odd shanty town and dissident settlement. 

“Better Living have been pretty ambitious lately. Seems they’re branching out into some pretty creepy experiments.”

“What kind of experiments?” Patrick asks.

“Mind control,” says Pete flatly. He slides his eyes across. “Drugs, mostly, but also some prototype implants. Keeping the populace dumb and productive. Cracking down on the dissidents too.”

“Gross,” says Patrick. There’s no shortage of governmental atrocity in the universe, and humans are hardly exempt from that. Colony 6 sounds no better and no worse than any other planet they pass on a given day.

“So Brendon and Ryan saw Party Poison give a speech and now he wants me to help the Killjoys overthrow BL/IND.”

Patrick laughs. He’s not making fun of Brendon – well, he is a bit – but really. That kid. “You’d have thought he’d had enough of mad cult leaders,” he comments. “Well. I guess he can’t idolize _you_ anymore,” he pokes Pete in the side. Pete grabs his hand. 

“No you idolize me instead.”

“Hah! Don’t you wish!” They wrestle for a minute and then Patrick lets Pete win, so Pete pins him to the bed and takes his hat off. Patrick glares at him. Pete goes in for a kiss. It’s tense: calculated.

“Wait,” Patrick says and pushes him off. “That’s not all.” 

Pete pouts. It’s all very fake.

“Stop trying to distract me,” Patrick’s getting annoyed. “What’s up? You’re still bothered about the Brendon thing? I’ll talk to him, tell him not to bother you about -“

“What would you say if I did meet with Party Poison?” Pete says.

“Excuse me, what?” Patrick gets up, retrieves his hat, and jams it back on his head. He’s going to need his hat for this conversation. 

“Just to talk,” Pete says quickly, and looks at his hands. For a wanted renegade he can look remarkably like a guilty six year old when he wants to.

“Why would you do that?” Patrick asks. “Like you just said, we don’t do that kind of interference. _You_ don’t do that kind of interference. Colony 6 elected to live under Better Living, no-one forced them.”

“Well but things have changed,” Pete flips over, so he’s lying on his stomach across the bed. “That was generations ago. Since BL got incorporated by Universal Harmonics, it’s a totally different setup. Brendon says the people who try to protest things are disappearing. You know - _disappearing_.”

“I know what assassination is Pete,” Patrick scowls. 

“You don’t have to come, obviously,” says Pete. “I’d take Andy.”

“I know I don’t have to come,” Patrick reminds him, “But you still haven’t told me why you care about this, apart from Brendon’s interest. Which – it’s Brendon, he’ll move on in a week.”

Pete looks askance.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” Patrick is pissed off. “Do whatever you want. You always do, anyway.”

“You knew that was the deal when you married me!” Pete yells after him as Patrick leaves.

“We’re not married!” Patrick yells back. This is the problem with small ships. There’s nowhere to go when you’re mad at Pete and avoiding everyone else. Joe’s on duty below decks – Maja’s turning him into quite the engineer, these days, and Patrick thinks about going and hanging out with him. Joe knows when teasing is not appropriate, but he doesn’t want to bother his friend so he ends up going to the mess room and watching some crap on the vid for an hour until Pete texts him:

_com bak I miss u :( :(_

The easiest way to win an argument with Pete is to ignore him.

As usual, Pete’s been busy in the interim hour:

“Do you recognise her?” he asks, turning his monitor towards Patrick and indicating a bad-quality photo. It looks like video capture at a distance. A backroom, probably filmed through a window, containing a table and some files and boxes. On the left side of the table is the rebel leader known as Party Poison, recognisable by the bright blur of his hair. A few figures hover in behind him, colors picking them out as Killjoy faction members. On the right side of the table is a young girl, face set, wrapped in a coat that crosses across her body. She’s much younger than Patrick remembers her, but clearly identifiable.

“That’s Greta,” he says. Was. Greta. The girl who died getting Brendon out of the compound. He hasn't thought of her in a while, and is immediately assailed by guilt for starting to forget.

“That is Greta,” Pete confirmed. “She was born on Colony 6, you know. Her parents shipped her off to McKracken to stop her joining the Killjoys.”

Something sinks inside Patrick. This is just like Pete. He’s been carrying a lot of guilt about Greta, and now he’s made this into some kind of honor thing. He thinks he owes it to her memory or something, to support the first cause she believed in.

“She told me she believed in McKraken, once,” Patrick said.

“Maybe she did,” said Pete. “She was only fourteen when they sent her. Or maybe she was just saying that to make it easier on us. She knew she wasn’t getting out.”

Patrick sighs. It’s a dangerous, reckless idea that will probably amount to nothing useful, but there’s no point trying to talk Pete out of something he’s made up his mind to do.

“So I’ll get Andy to figure out passage to Colony 6,” Pete is typing: “Where do you want dropped off? There’s a nice little station near the Archer Nebula, Bill can-“

“For fuck’s sake, Pete, of course I’m coming with you,” Patrick snaps. Pete glances back at him, a sly grin on his face. He knew Patrick would do it. “You’re a dick,” he adds.

“I love you?” Pete tries.

“And shouldn’t you be on the bridge, anyway?”

“Travie’s got it,” Pete says, and goes back to his computer. 

‘I love you too’, thinks Patrick, something like fear twisting his insides: ‘And Goddamit you don’t make it easy, sometimes’.

*

Patrick does call Brendon that night. He’s technically on duty but the bridge is empty and calm, nothing on screen and Patrick’s got one eye on sensors so he dials Brendon on his personal phone. Brendon looks good, tanned and healthy and as far as Patrick can tell from the vidscreen, looks like he’s grown a couple of inches. 

“So you got your wish,” Patrick tells him: “We’re headed for Colony 6.” He quashes annoyance. Brendon isn’t to blame for what Pete does. It’s just things had been pretty quiet lately, a distinct lack of firefights and imminent physical danger, and Patrick was starting to get used to it.

“I wish I could come,” says Brendon. 

“I don’t,” says Patrick. “And I’m sure your parents don’t either.”

“I am actually nineteen now,” Brendon points out: “Legal adult and all.”

“Oh my God, you are. How did that happen?” Patrick asks a little plaintively. Despite everything that’s happened in the last two years, notably the rearrangement of his entire life, it seems like yesterday that Brendon was a wide-eyed first year. “Stop growing up, would you? You’re giving me a complex here. How’s your assignment?”

Brendon brightens immediately and starts chattering about his new position as a junior navigator on a diplomatic cruiser. He’s having fun and making friends, naturally:

“But I miss everyone,” he sighs. “It’s not like good old Academy days.”

“The good old Academy days of getting mixed up with dangerous criminals?” Patrick asks.

“Yeah,” says Brendon without a hint of irony. “Tell everyone I said hi, okay? And hey, call me when you get to the Colony system? And, hey, if you get to meet Party Poison…..”

“I’m not asking Party Poison for an autograph for you, Brendon.”

“I was thinking more like a picture.”

“I sincerely doubt he does photo-ops.”

“You could ask….”

“Bye, Brendon.”

“So this is very exciting,” Maja has appeared on the bridge behind Patrick, silent catlike. Patrick jumps. “Colony 6 is it? I must say it’s not the sort of thing we’d do on the regular.”

Patrick pauses, watchful. He’s never been quite as comfortable around Maja as he has everybody else. She has never been mean or even outwardly rude to him; she’s just very, very cool, the way Patrick imagined Pete would be before he’d met them. There are times she seems suspicious of Patrick. Like now:

“Pete agreed to this?” Maja asks, perching on the navigational board.

“I – it – this is Pete’s idea!” Patrick tries to keep his voice even. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

“Hmm,” Maja picks up a discarded screwdriver and twirls it in her long fingers. 

“Why don’t you believe me?” Patrick demands. 

“I do,” Maja says evenly. “It’s just – no offence, Patrick, but you’ve changed him.”

“I - well.”

“Before he met you,” Maja cocks her head to one side and studies Patrick, intelligent light eyes flicking over him like she’s trying to read something. Then: “Before he met you he was more logical in his decisions. You bring out his sentimental side. I always knew it was there, but it didn’t come into tactical decisions. He wouldn’t have gone off on something like this over a dead girl.”

Patrick says nothing. 

“When I decide to commit to something,” Maja goes on, “I do it wholeheartedly. I committed to Pete – to this crew – a long time before you came on the scene.” She gazes at him evenly. “I don’t dislike you in any way, Patrick. But you’re an unstable influence.”

“Okay jut a second,” Patrick is annoyed. “This isn’t fair. I don’t tell Pete what to do. I tried to talk him out of this. I talk him out of stupid stuff all the time. If you’re not happy with his leadership-“ he breaks off. 

Maja raises an eyebrow at him. She’s been here a lot longer than he has. 

“Look,” Patrick says, takes his hat off, runs his hand through his hair and puts his hat back on again. “I think can both agree Pete does whatever he wants, alright? If he wants to take on more since meeting me, I don’t see how that my fault.”

“He wants to be better for you,” Maja says frankly, looking him in the eye: “And for someone with a giant hero complex, ‘better’ means riskier.”

“Well you don’t have to come,” Patrick’s losing patience. 

“I’m aware of that” says Maja evenly. “I suggest you don’t either.”

“What – excuse me?”

“Pete’s more rational without you around. It’s safer for everyone if you stay here. Or take a holiday. Go to earth, visit your parents.”

Maybe she’s right, and there’s a small part of Patrick acknowledging that, but he feels patronized and cross now, and his stubborn streak won’t let him back down now so he tells her:

“I don’t need a holiday. If the situation on Colony 6 is as bad as Brendon says, then I want to see it for myself.”

Maja shrugs, elegant, and slips down off the edge of the control panel. “I see why Pete likes you so much,” she says. “Two of a kind, aren’t you?”

“Hardly,” Patrick scoffs, but at that moment Sisky, Joe Travie spill through the door, talking loudly about a video game they’re playing, and Maja and holds his eye for a second longer before leaving as quietly as she’d come.

 

*

 

The red planes of Colony 6 are visible from the viewing port of the shuttle, smaller oceans and flatter continents than Earth.

“Weird place for a Colony,” Joe observes. “Doesn’t seem like there’d be much opportunity to grow food.”

“BL/IND doesn’t grow food,” says Pete. “Its all synthesised in their labs.”

“Gross,” says Joe. “Well, that’s one way around it.”

They can’t dock anywhere near the cities. Luckily, Andy knows someone who knows someone who can direct them to a tiny dilapidated port in the middle of the desert, off the path of BL/IND patrols and in neutral territory between roaming gangs. Its still a bad idea to just land – territories and boundaries change quickly in the Badlands – but Andy’s contact assures them they’ll be expected. Just the four of them have set out to make first contact – more might be perceived as a threat. When they land, though, the port seems deserted.

“Uh…hello?” Joe is first off. He hops down the steps onto the tarmac landing strip, and peers around. Patrick follows him. There’s an abandoned communications form tower, from which they got no signal, and a warehouse with the door missing. The air is oppressively hot, hard to breathe, though its still too early for the full glare of the sun. The land is very flat.

“Hello?” Pete tries. His voice carries, and there’s a flap of wings somewhere as a bird takes off.

“Drop your weapons, hands above your heads,” says a calm voice, and several people appear out of nowhere, guns raised and aimed at their group. All their faces are concealed, either by masks or motorbike helmets.

“Woah,” says Pete, impressed: “How did you do that?”

“Drop your weapons,” repeats the speaker. It’s a tall, skinny guy in a red leather jacket. (Okay, maybe closer to average height. Most people are tall to Patrick). He’s wearing a helmet with ‘Good Luck’ emblazoned across the visor. His voice is even, but he’s pointing a pretty serious gun at them, so Patrick figures they’d better do what he says. Andy, Pete and Joe have the same idea, and are slowly placing their guns on the ground and lifting their hands.

“Good,” says the guy. Two of the other figures – a man and a woman, Patrick thinks, though it’s hard to be sure with what they’re wearing – step forward and gather up their guns. Then they get patted down, and the rest of Andy’s weapons get produced.

“Oh come on,” he complains.

“Nothing personal,” shrugs the tall guy. “You want to come with us, you come unarmed. That’s deal.” 

They’re led around the tower to a beat-up trans-am. Three of their escorts get in and the other two get onto motorbikes that are parked against the tower. Everything is painted in bright colours: reds, greens, blues and purples stark against the desert. Whoever these people are, they don’t believe in camouflage. The tall guy gets into the driver’s seat and removes his helmet. He’s dirty blond with angular features, but a mask remains over his eyes. There’s something vaguely familiar about him.

“You guys are Killjoys?” Pete leans forwards between the front seat and addresses the tall guy, who’s driving.

“We are,” he says.

“Cool. I’m Pete.”

“We know who you are,” he says, and his mouth quirks upwards at one corner.

“You do? Then what’s with the prisoner treatment?”

“Policy,” says the guy without taking his eyes off the road.

“So what’s your name?” asks Pete.

“Pete,” says Andy.

“What, he knows my name.”

Pause.

“You can call me Kobra,” he says. “This is Fuck Machine,” and nods to the woman sitting at his left, the one who’d picked up their weapons. Patrick feels himself blush at the nickname.

“Okay, but what’s your real name?” Pete asks.

“I don’t hand that out to just anyone,” says Kobra.

“Oh a challenge, eh?” says Pete, and Patrick scowls, and he doesn’t know why he’s scowling because this is Pete being Pete, he’s like this with everyone, flirting is his default mode of engagement. Kobra doesn’t say anything to that, but the woman he called Fuck Machine turns around in her seat – she’s not strapped in – and appraises them. She’s removed her mask, and Patrick sees she’s extremely pretty – dark hair and pale skin and red lips, almost doll-like features. Her dark eyes are sharp and clever.

“Pete Wentz and Andy Hurley we know,” she says. “And these are?”

Patrick opens his mouth, but Pete cuts him off:

“You’ll get their names when we get yours,” he says, grinning. Patrick wants to say hey, it’s my name, don’t talk over me. But he feels like they can’t show division in front of the strangers, so he bites his tongue.

The trans-am rolls over dust-red planes, engine growling. The motorbikes zip and growl in counterpoint. The sun rises in the sky, and heat rises from the ground. Patrick sweats, and anger simmers in his stomach. Joe tries to make conversation a few times, but no-one takes it up. 

Eventually, planes give way to some scattered settlements. Some are shanty towns, built out of metal and plywood, some are more solid, old warehouses and houses and short tower blocks. Pete is very interested, peering through the windows at everything, commenting on things he finds ingenious on the one hand or badly done on the other. The Killjoys aren’t replying, but Patrick sees in the rearview mirror that Kobra is smiling.

“So where’s your HQ?” Pete asks.

“You don’t get to know that,” says Fuck Machine.

“What? Why not? I thought you were taking us to your leader.”

“Yeah, not for a while,” says Fuck Machine.

“Hang on, we came all this way-“ Patrick says.

“And we appreciate it,” says Fuck Machine. “But we didn’t ask you to. You’ll understand we can’t take just anyone to meet Party Poison.”

“Pete is hardly just anyone.”

“Alright I’ll rephrase,” she says archly. “We don’t take _anyone_ to meet Poison until we’re damn sure of their intentions. And you are?”

“I’m Pete’s –“ he stops. He’s Pete’s what? Boyfriend? Well, yeah, but he hates that word, and it certainly doesn’t cover his role here. Assistant? Fuck no. “I’m a pilot,” he settles on. 

Pete gives him a smug look like he knows his dilemma. He does. The asshole.

“What’s that?” Joe asks suddenly, straining to hear. There’s a low, buzzing hum in the air that eventually resolves itself into a rhythm, and then, as they travel, they can pick out:

“Music,” says Pete. He looks surprised.

“That’s Hard Stuff,” says Patrick, “They were a band in the seventies, with the guy from Atomic Rooster. This is the second album, Warhorse.”

Everyone looks at him and he blushes, fiddles with his hat. Kobra looks kind of impressed.

“Doc’s gonna like this one,” says Fuck Machine to Kobra, and he nods without taking his eyes off the road.

“Where’s it coming from?” asks Joe as the sound increases and clarifies:

“You’ll see,” says Fuck Machine, and they pull up in front of a shack. Music pumps loudly from inside, a different track now, probably something new that even Patrick doesn’t recognise. There’s an antennae on the roof, and a couple more bikes parked around the back. A small girl with wild hair sits on the front step, looking bored, but perks up immediately once their caravan comes into view. One of the bikes screeches to a halt in front of building, and its rider, the one with the crop top, hops off onto the ground. The girl runs over to give him a quick hug and he ruffles her hair affectionately.

“Welcome to Dr. Death Defying’s radio shack,” says Fuck Machine. Andy looks interested. He’s clearly heard of this guy. Patrick pokes him and raises his eyebrows.

“He’s a survivor of the Helium Wars,” Andy says quietly. “One of the last.” He pauses. “If Poison is the heart and mind of the Killjoy rebellion, Dr. D is the soul.”

Fuck Machine gives him a sharp look, then she smiles, clearly approving. They pile out and duck inside the dim building. The girl watches them from behind crop top’s leg. She’s younger than Patrick initially thought – just a little child. He offers her a smile, but she just stares.

The shack is small and dark inside, overflowing with records and pieces of equipment. Wires spew from dusty soundboards and amps. In one corner is a mixing deck, in another a pile of crates. The walls are decorated with posters: bands Patrick doesn't recognise, figures in bright colours. Over the deck, pride of place, is a large WANTED poster displaying the faces of four masked Killjoys, Poison recognizable by his bright hair. One of them is Kobra. Each has a red X over his face. Hunched over the deck in the corner is a large man in a wheelchair. As the track finishes, he says

“That was Last Chances by The Conflict. Next up more new music from our very own Desert Rat Brigade, after this.” And takes his headphones off. He spins the chair around in quick, agile move, and says

“Well?”

Patrick’s about to snap, “Well, what?” – he’s getting pretty tired of these peoples’ attitude, given how they’re here on a goodwill mission and everything, but to his surprise Andy cuts him off, uncharacteristically excited:

“Um, hi,” he says, “Dr. Death Defying, right? It’s um, glad to meet you. I’m Andy.” And offers his hand, which the DJ shakes, looking amused.

“He’s a big fan,” Pete claps Andy on the shoulder, and Andy glowers at him.

“And you’re a big deal,” Dr. Death Defying looks Pete up and down: “In your opinion.”

That pulls Pete up short – he’s not good with being called out. Dr. D has a voice made for radio – powerful and rich, reassuring and commanding at the same time. 

“I do what I can,” Pete says, folding his arms and Andy elbows him in the ribs, hard. There’s a small stifled noise from behind them: to Patrick’s surprise, Kobra’s poker-face is wavering as he tries not to laugh. 

“Well that’s good to hear, good to hear,” says the DJ, straight-faced. “Now why don’t y’all take a seat and we can get to know each other’s intentions a little better?”

“Okay just a second,” Patrick’s had enough: “What exactly do you mean by intentions? What are you implying? You’ve already taken our guns and done everything short of blindfold us to get us here, so what do you think we’re going to do, exactly? We’re on your side. You know who Pete is, so you should have a pretty good idea of what we stand for. But if we’re gonna be treated like crim – like, enemies, maybe we should just leave right now.”

For the second time, everyone turns to stare at him. Andy looks vaguely horrified. Joe looks scared. Pete is caught between worried and pleased, eyes darting between Patrick and 

Dr. D. The Killjoys are unreadable, and Dr. D’s face is like stone for a second before he breaks into a deep laugh.

“This one,” he says, pointing at Patrick: “This one, I like.”

“Told you,” murmurs Fuck Machine to Kobra, who just raises his eyebrows in silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble on Colony 6 for our heroes, maybe in more ways than one...
> 
> (I feel dirty)

“Told you Dr. D would like him,” murmurs Fuck Machine to Kobra, who just raises his eyebrows in silence.

“Show Pony, see if you can’t rustle up some drinks for our guests,” Dr. D says, and crop top, who hasn’t removed his helmet yet, salutes and makes a quick turn out of the room. Joe and Andy release their breath, and Pete squeezes Patrick’s hand surreptitiously. They head into the back room which has an assortment and scattered furniture, though Pete and Joe are still relegated to boxes, they make do.

“First things first,” Dr. D says. “Who are these?”

“I’m Patrick Stump, I’m a pilot,” says Patrick, and Pete pokes him as hard as he can, because Patrick ruined his plan to exchange his name for the Killjoys, or something. So Patrick pinches the thin skin on the top of Pete’s hand between his thumb and fingernail until Pete glares and yanks his hand back. 

“Joe,” offers Joe, apparently deciding the cards are down. “I’m a navigator slash engineer.”

“Nice little crew you got yourself here, Wentz,” says Dr. D.

“The best,” Pete says sincerely, and Patrick’s heart warms, and he immediately feels bad for not co-opearting.

“So,” says Dr. D., “I’m guessing you cats heard about the exodus.”

Pete looks blank. His expressive face works to his benefit in many situations, but bluffing isn’t one of them.

“Hoo boy,” says Dr. D. “Pony, hurry up with those drinks, would ya? Maybe throw in something a little stronger than water? This is gonna take a while.”

It takes a while. By the end of Dr. D’s story, Patrick feels a little sick, and Pete is grim-faced and pale. He and Andy are trading looks with each other in that language they have that Patrick isn’t part of (he reminds himself, sometimes, that for all Pete and Patrick share, and they share a lot, Andy is Pete’s oldest friend). Joe’s back to terrified. It turns out BL/IND, under the leadership of an ambitious new management team, has pioneered a project to create what they believe is the perfect civilization: nothing new there, except for the fact participation is mandatory. Citizens are being drugged into submission as perfect workers, enforced by a military police order that the Killjoys refer to as ‘Dracs’: no-one knows if the Dracs are aliens from another planet, or genetically engineered in BL/IND’s labs, or even some kind of flesh-robot hybrid, but they’re armed and they’re obedient and there’s a lot of them.

“I know what I think,” says Show Pony.

“Yeah don’t start that,” says Fuck Machine.

“What?” Pete demands, but Dr. D won’t be deterred from his tale once its started. BL/IND declared war on the desert gangs: everybody who absconded from the cities became an outlaw. They don’t know exactly what BL/IND are doing in their labs, but if definitely involves brain manipulation. The cities have been whitewashed – literally. Music is banned, as are primary colours, and people who expressed of dissent from the regime began to disappear until no-one dared raise their voice against it.

“Who’s in charge?” Pete asks, leaning forward with his hands between his knees and fingers threaded. There’s a frown of concentration on his face.

“No-one knows,” says Fuck Machine: “The real leaders are faceless. I mean, there are prominent figures in the regime – generals, top scientists, some official types, but they all refer to some shady top level that nobody understands….very Kafka-esque.”

“You mentioned an exodus,” says Andy.

“That’s what they’re calling it,” says Dr. D. “Couple weeks ago, a whole caravan of folks tried to leave the capital. There was an underground network of sorts – some of the Killjoys had contact with them.” He looks at Kobra, who nods. The one called Show Pony is stood in the doorway, leaning on the wall. He or she still hasn’t removed their helmet.

“There was a massacre,” Dr. D says. “Either there was a leak, or BL/IND’s surveillance caught them. It was a trap - Dracs were waiting to descend on the exit tunnel. They – there were kids there. Any survivors got taken to the labs for reprogramming immediately, and BL/IND declared a state of martial law across the capital. We are now at war,” he delivers plainly. “Nobody out here asked for a war, but here it is.”

“What’s your objective?” asks Pete.

“Take down BL/IND,” says Dr. D. “It sounds crazy, and it probably is crazy, possibly suicidal. Maybe all this will accomplish is to wipe out the remaining tumbleweeds, but if we don’t act, they’re gonna move on us anyway, so.”

“Is he always like this?” says Pete to Kobra.

“No,” says Kobra, absolutely straight-faced: “Sometimes he’s pessimistic.”

Pete brays his stupid laugh, and the corner of Kobra’s mouth turns up. Humor flicks across his eyes, brief, but there. Pete beams at him, and Kobra holds his eyes for a second. Something unnamed, not a thought yet, not a defined feeling, stirs inside Patrick. It’s not good.

“We don’t figure they’ll move on us immediately in any case,” says Fuck Machine. “So for now we lie low, scout command centers from possible. What we really need is a whole team of hackers of Kobra’s calibre.”

“I’m a hacker,” says Andy.

They all look at him. 

“Cool,” says Kobra after a moment. “You good?”

“I’m not bad.”

“Pssht,” Pete rolls his eyes. “He’s too modest. If BL/INDS network can be infiltrated Andy can infiltrate.”

“It can be,” Fuck Machine nods. “Or at least it could. We’ve been inside BLINDSPACE and everything. Of course, it’s a dangerous business everytime we make progress they block and usually manage to murder whoever’s responsible.”

“But we think it’s the only way to disable the computer,” Kobra finishes.

“In the meantime,” Dr. D says, clapping his hands. “Plenty out here in the desert to keep us occupied, am I right Tumbleweeds?”

“Right,” says Kobra. “Which brings us to the question – why are you guys here?”

“Hey, you know what they say about me,” says Pete. “Always finding ways to do the right thing by humanity.”

“Yeah I do know what they say about you,” says Kobra dryly: “And it’s not that.”

Pete brays laughter again, then he sobers. “We had a mutual friend,” he said. “Me and Poison. It’s for us to talk about.”

“Fair enough,” says Fuck Machine and slips off the busted desk chair she’s been perched on. “Doc, can these guys camp out here tonight? We’ll pick em up in the morning, maybe put em to use with some basic recon.”

“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the sanctity of your leader,” Pete says. Fuck Machine fixes him with a long look.

“Poison,” she says, then pauses, looks at Kobra Kid. Then: “Poison might not be what you’re expecting.”

Patrick can believe that. Pete was the last thing he was expecting, in every sense of the words.

“He’s been through a lot,” says Show Pony. “Lot of shit’s happened.”

“He’s still our leader,” says Fuck Machine, rapidly as though to cut off any doubt: “Just…”

“It’s cool,” says Andy, in that way he has of saying just the right thing in the right way at the right moment. “We understand.”

Pause.

“Well,” says Fuck Machine, but she sounds mollified: “You might do. In time, I suppose.”

*

The Killjoys leave them with Dr. D overnight, taking the little girl with them. It’s nearly dark, in any case, and they’ve been travelling all day. The DJ’s in an expansive mood – setting aside the state of the planet for the moment, he lets Patrick go through his vinyl collection and they talk Old Earth bands until Pete complains about Patrick only liking dead people (he’s just tired of being ignored, Patrick knows). Show Pony, who seems to live at the radio shack, offers them dinner in the form of some mush in black and white BL/IND labelled cans – they have freeze-dried stuff in their packs that tastes better – which is to say, tastes of anything, but it seems a bad idea to refuse hospitality.

“Power pup,” says Show Pony disdainfully of the mush: “All the nutrients you need to live in a handy twice-daily serving.”

“Its efficient, I’ll give them that,” says Joe.

“Like everything about them.”

Dr. D spins the decks late into the night, interspersing new and classic tracks with cheerful addresses to the desert dwellers, warnings about BL/IND movements and sensors as he receives them on a junky-looking laptop. They’re able to use his signal to send an all’s-well message back to the ship and get Travie’s copy, then bed down on the grubby pair of mattresses provided. Patrick’s half-tempted to bunk down with Joe because he can’t trust Pete not to be inappropriate. But Pete’s grabbing him already and tugging him down, so he goes with it. He doesn’t know when he drifts off, but comes awake when Dr. D shuts down for the night, taking the last vinyl off the turntable with a click.

“That’s all from me for tonight, Tumbleweeds,” he says, deep soothing voice carrying over the airwaves: “If the desert gods like it, we’ll be back tomorrow same time same place with your soundtrack to   
the revolution. Dr. D out.”

Then he’s asleep again.

*

Fuck Machine and Kobra are back in the morning. Pete’s eyes go straight past her and settle on Kobra, and he beams, and Patrick wants to hit something.

“So,” says Fuck Machine, shrugging off her shoulder bag. “Today is a supply run.”

Patrick feels a surge of irritation. Joe puts a hand on his shoulder discretely, telling him to keep cool. Patrick shrugs it off. Fuck Machine pulls a small device from her bag and points it at the group. A map appears in the dirt.

“This is outpost nine,” she says: “A sort of mini city erected by BL/IND for research purposes. Something went wrong and its mostly abandoned. Good scavenging ground. Sometimes we run into hostile gangs or the odd Drac patrol, but its pretty safe.”

“Relatively speaking,” says Kobra.

“Sure,” says Pete. “What are we looking for?”

“Food, medicine, first aid supplies,” Fuck Machine ticks off. “Weapons and electronics. Anything we can trade or barter. Bike parts, but that’s unlikely. In any case we can always use a few more pairs of   
hands.” 

“We’ll split up,” says Kobra: “Machine can take two of you in by the east gate, and I’ll take the others by the south. West side is stripped already.”

“Cool,” says Pete. Patrick stops himself from objecting in public, but as they’re packing up and preparing to leave he takes Pete aside and says,

“You’re very co-operative about all this.”

“Well…yeah,” says Pete with exaggerated slowness: “That is the plan.”

“Is it? I didn’t think we came all this way to make goddam _supply runs_.”

“What, too menial for you?”

“Don’t twist my words.”

They glare at each other hotly for a moment, then Pete softens:

“Look, it’s just for a few days, alright? Just until they trust us. Can you just go with it for a few days, please Trick? It won’t take long once they see us in action. Please. For me.”

When Pete asks him something directly like that, Patrick rarely denies him.

“Alright,” he sighs. “Just for a few days.”

Pete beams and leans in to peck him on the cheek. At the last second Patrick turns his face, and Pete’s kiss ends up between ear and hair. It’s troubling – they are normally much more in sync than this – but there’s no time to think on it, everybody’s leaving. The Killjoys want Pete and Andy separated, so Patrick and Pete end up with Kobra and Joe and Andy with Fuck Machine. They take separate cars:

“Easier to get away if something goes wrong,” says Kobra, and Patrick sighs. Hello again, imminent physical danger, he thinks: I didn’t miss you.

The day is hot and dry again – waves flicker on the red ground, and at Patrick’s first glimpse of Outpost 9 he thinks its an illusion. But the shapes solidify into a walls, and as they approach, he makes   
out that they’re topped with barbed wire curls, rusty and broken in places. Kobra’s been quiet, driving, but now he grabs a walkie-talkie from under the dash and says

“Kobra. Target sighted, we’re approaching at C62, copy?”

“Copy that,” says crackles Fuck Machine’s voice: “We’re at A80.”

“Organized,” says Pete.

“We’ve been doing this awhile,” says Kobra. His voice is as dry as ever, but there’s a smile in it. Pete catches the smile and beams. They pull up at the wall and Kobra says

“Landed,” into the walkie-talkie:

“Landed and waiting for you, kid,” says Fuck Machine: “We’re going in.”

“Copy that,” Kobra says, then reaches under the dash and produces a pair of phasers. They’re quite different from Patrick’s own gun, almost fake-looking, brightly coloured and pieced together out of several parts: 

“Most effective thing we’ve found against Dracs,” he explains, passing them out.

“You make these?” asks Pete.

“Our engineer did. They’re easy to use. Even the motorbaby has one.”

“Cool,” Pete turns the gun back and forth and checks it over. Patrick does the same. Kobra leads them up to the wall and stops outside a steel door. There’s a code lock on the outside with an iris scanner, but he just pushes it and it swings inwards.

“I can see why this place is half stripped,” says Pete.

“Yeah,” says Kobra: Keep your eyes open, we could have company.”

BL/IND favors square designs – both the buildings are the street design are blocky in construction. Most of them were once white, now greyish and crumbling around the edges. The black-and-white   
BL/IND logo smiles down from billboards and street signs, but people have defaced it with a range of brightly colored paint. Some wit has sprayed a red dick poised to enter its mouth on a huge sign   
over the main street. Pete cackles out loud at that. Kobra half-smiles. The air is still and hot. They hear nothing.

“What are we looking for?” Patrick asks.

“Depends what we can find. General stores are good.”

“Like that?” Pete points to a squat white building, sort of bunker shaped, with ‘Store’ and the BL/IND face on a placard out front. It looks relatively intact, if dirty.

“Like that,” says Kobra, picks up a stone, and throws it towards the front window. It bounces off with a sharp sound, but nothing else stirs. “Alright,” he says, “after me,” and heads towards the door. He   
enters gun first, scans around, but there’s no movement, and Pete and Patrick are right behind him. “Damn,” he comments once they’re inside: “Beaten to it.” The store has already been sacked – half   
the shelves are empty, piles of tins pushed over and boxes scattered.

“Better than nothing,” Pete says.

“True. Alright, we want non-perishable foods, as much water as we can carry, any medicines you can find – pick what looks useful.”

Patrick’s never scavenged before, but he’s travelled light, and he knows what a crew on a shoestring needs, so he starts rooting around in the crates, mentally sorting into goods into essential, luxury and useless. As he lifts a crate, there’s a flash of movement from underneath and he can’t help the yelp that escapes him as a rat darts out and across the floor. Kobra and Pete jump, then relax when they see what it is. Pete grins at him.

“Shut up,” mutters Patrick, embarrassed, and Pete holds his hands up, indicating surrender, before there’s a screech of brakes outside and a series of thuds.

“Fuck,” says Kobra, “Let’s get out of here,” and vaults over a fallen shelving unit, heading for the window. It’s too late: suddenly they’re surrounded by Dracs, coming through the door, through the   
windows, through the backroom.

“Drop your stuff and fire,” says Kobra, and Patrick doesn’t need telling twice – luckily the Dracs are stupid as they are numerous, falling beneath their phasers even as backup arrives to replace them.   
The humans end up back-to-back, retreating towards the front door which has stopped spewing Dracs at least – Patrick hears a sizzle, then there’s a bright flash of pain from his left arm and it goes   
numb, falling to his side, though his fingers remain clenched around the backpack he’s filled with provisions. Pete yells his name and he wants to say it’s okay, it’s nothing but they’re out the door,   
racing for the relative safety of an office block. Dracs pursue them, but they fire backwards and take out the three or four that watched their exit. There’s a moment of silence as they breathe behind   
the door.

“Patrick!” Pete exclaims and starts fussing all over him:

“Oh Pete – it’s fine – Pete stop that don’t be ridiculous.” 

“But you’re hurt!” Pete practically wails.

“It’s nothing,” Patrick tries to push him off, but his left arm isn’t responding too well. There’s a tear in his jacket and the flesh feels singed beneath:

“Paralyzer,” Kobra says. “It will wear off within an hour or so. You should get the burn treated before then, by the way – take advantage of the numbness.”

Patrick looks around and raises his eyebrows as though to say, ‘er, how’? But then Kobra notices he’s still clutching the backpack. It’s come partly unzipped, and a couple of items are spilling out onto the floor:

“Hey a v82 charger!” Kobra exclaims. It’s the most animated Patrick’s ever heard him: “Where did you find that?”

“It was kind of just on the shelf,” says Patrick.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for one of these!” Kobra picks it up and turns it over in his long fingers. 

“Well – er, now you’ve got one,” says Patrick like a complete idiot, but Kobra just says

“Thanks man,” and pockets the charger, then gets out his walkie-talkie thing and says

“Fuck Machine, we’ve got Dracs. Need to get out of here.”

“Copy that. What are your co-ordinates?”

“We’re at C32.45 A15.97.”

“There’s a hole in the wall at D41.2 A19.89, if we swing the van around can you make it?”

“We can make it.”

“See you there.”

They follow Kobra through the building and then onto a fire escape. This way they move through several office blocks. Pete’s increasingly agitated – he’s not used to this, not being in charge, effectively taking orders from one someone. He wants to say something, Patrick can tell, but he doesn’t know enough about their situation. Patrick’s not feeling his greatest either – his arm is really starting to hurt now, and he has to bite his lip against asking how much farther.

“So the Dracs are pretty dumb,” says Pete, ducking under a fallen beam and holding it aside to let Patrick pass.

“Uh huh,” says Kobra, distracted: “There’s a lot of them though.”

“Where do you think they come from?”

Kobra glances back at him and something passes across his face. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

“This is hardly the time, Pete,” says Patrick, and Pete throws him an upset look, but then Kobra says

“Here,” pushes open a door, and they emerge into the bright desert light. They’ve come close to the wall, but there’s a stretch of open dirt between them and the place where the stones have crumbled (sustained fire, it looks like, there are char marks around the edges of the gap). Kobra peers out and looks back and forth, then says

“Go, I’ll cover you,” and this is probably unfair given that he literally just told Pete not to make a fuss, but Patrick can’t help feeling like maybe Pete should be paying more attention to him, hello,   
injured partner/best friend here, and less looking at Kobra with big round impressed eyes like Kobra’s the coolest thing he’s seen since the invisibility field on Episilon 7. He grabs Pete’s hand with his good arm, which is unusal for him, and they bolt for the wall together. Pete looks back to make sure Kobra’s right after them, and Patrick pulls hard. Then he shoves Pete forward toward the and ducks through himself. The transam is waiting. He pushes Pete inside, aware that Pete is still looking back over his shoulder, but it’s fine, Kobra’s there, and Andy reaches back to grab his wrist and haul him into the van too.

“Dude, what happened to your arm?” Joe’s eyes are wide.

“Phaser burn,” says Patrick, then: “Ow.”

“Take your shirt off,” says Kobra, who is rummaging in a kit at the back of the van, and Patrick turns red, because he is not a taking-off-shirt kind of guy, and especially not in a van with this many people. He's also sweating like hell. Fuck Machine is driving, and they peal away without comment, city walls fading into the dust. Pete reaches for Patrick and starts literally unbuttoning his shirt, and Patrick slaps him off and starts doing it. This is a terrible time to be self-conscious, but Patrick’s always aware at some level of the difference in standard-attractiveness levels between him and Pete, has sometimes wondered if people look at them and wonder what Pete sees in him. He wonders what Pete sees in him. And then here’s Kobra, who is tall and fit and skinny and pretty in an angular way, and capable and mysterious and Pete seems so very taken with him. Kobra could take off his shirt in public, no problem, and look good doing it.

It’s nothing. It must be nothing. Pete likes everyone.

There’s a red blistering smear on his arm, and now that the numbing agent is wearing off he can feel it: Kobra pours something liquid over it and Patrick yelps:

“Warn a guy!”

“Warning makes it worse,” says Kobra. “That was just disinfectant.”

He applies a dressing with steady hands, despite the speed of the vehicle, and Patrick feels bad for any ill-feeling towards him. Patrick is the only one of their group who managed to keep his backpack, but the other team has made a good haul, lots of cans, some small tools, and two canisters of gasoline.

“Patrick got as v82 charger,” Kobra says to Fuck Machine.

“No kidding!” she calls back from the driver’s seat. “That’s awesome, great job Patrick.”

“It was pretty much a co-incidence,” Patrick says.

“Take the compliment,” Andy says, and pokes Patrick in the thigh. Kobra’s talking into a walkie-talkie again:

“Yeah we’re out,” he says: “No, the West side heading for the water tower. Okay. Okay. Sure, why not, bring her. See you in twenty.”

Patrick looks to Pete, half wanting sympathy or some kind of acknowledgement, but Pete’s staring out the window with the desert sun reflecting in his dark eyes, and a small mysterious smile on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

The van pulls up at an open campground. It’s evening by now, sun a low burning haze in the sky. Patrick is thirsty, sore and soaked in sweat. He knows he’s red as a lobster by now – Joe’s not far behind him. Pete, of course, doesn’t burn – he’s sitting cross-legged and chatting away, hands animated, while Kobra listens and interjects sometimes in his even way. After putting the brake on, Fuck Machine hops down from the cab and whistles into the air. Straight away, two more figures appear out of the shrubbery, almost seeming to materialize before them.

 

“You have got to teach us how to do that,” says Pete.

The newcomers are a short guy in green and yellow leathers, and a guy who removes his helmet to reveal a fro even more dramatic than Joe’s on a high-static day.

“Fun Ghoul, Jet Star,” says Fuck Machine, pointing at them in turn, and Patrick realises where he’s seen them – theirs were the other two faces Xd out on the WANTED poster in Dr.  
D’s shack.

“Hey,” says Jet Star, who is clearly the forthcoming one in the group, and shakes everyone’s hand and says “Nice to meet you” and acts generally more welcoming than anyone they’ve met so far. Fun Ghoul nods, a curt acknowledgement, but he looks from Pete to Andy and back with definite interest. Tattooes spiral all over his hands and up his wrists. Despite his small size, Patrick wouldn’t bet against him in a fight. They all sort through their findings and Fuck Machine fills the others in on the Dracs’ movements. 

“They bleed,” Pete observes: “The Dracs, I mean. Whatever they are, they’re made of flesh.”

“Personally I think they’re grown in labs,” says Jet. “That explains how they’re all the same, and how easily they replace them. They’re a kind of clone.”

“Or a virus,” says Fun Ghoul.

“What do you mean?” asks Andy, interested.

“That’s impossible, I’ve already told you,” Kobra cuts in with uncharacteristic force.

“What’s impossible?” asks Pete.

“We don’t know everything BL/IND’s capable of,” Fun Ghoul argues. “They could have found a way.”

Kobra turns away and busies himself setting up tent poles.

“What are they talking about?” Andy asks Jet.

“There’s this theory that Dracs come from BL/INDSPACE,” says Jet. “Essentially, they’re a virus. It would explain a lot of their behaviour.”

“It’s not possible,” says Kobra. “Nothing material can travel in or out of BL/INDSPACE. Dracs are material. Like Pete said, they bleed.”

“Theoretically,” says Andy, looking thoughtful, but Kobra cuts him off:

“Can you help me with this?” 

Which is weird, because Fun Ghoul and Joe are both standing right next to him, but then everyone pitches in and the camp gets set up pretty quickly. They celebrate the successful trip with some canned sweetcorn and hotdogs in place of the generic mush, then the Killjoys start a small fire and they split off into little groups to talk and keep watch and relax. Pete and Kobra sit together and start talking about stupid films from Old Earth, and then they’re laughing, and that’s….

Really.

This is all stupid. This is crazy. This is Pete being Pete. He’s always like this.

 _‘You knew that was the deal when you married me’_.

“What’s up?” Pete bumps Patrick’s good arm.

“Nothing,” Patrick says. He realizes he’s been staring into the firepit and not talking to anyone for a while now.

“Yes it is,” Pete makes meaningful eyes at him. “Tell. Does your arm hurt? Andy probably has Tylenol or something in his backpack, he’s all organized like that.”

“No,” Patrick says, even though it does, somewhat, but that’s not why he’s being moody.

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m tired.”

There’s an odd pause then Pete says:

“You should go to bed then.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick, though he isn’t sleepy in the slightest, and finds himself taking to a tent and curling up in a sleeping bag, with no hope of falling asleep any time soon, still listening to the others laughing and talking outside. At some point Pete comes in, lies down next to him and puts an arm around his waist. Patrick pretends to be asleep, but they both know he isn’t.

 

*

 

Morning is cold in the desert. Patrick reminds himself to be thankful for central heating on board the ship as he drags himself awake. Pete is gone – the blankets are wrinkled and messed up where he was lying, but the spot is cold. Outside, Fuck Machine is on her phone as she strides back and forth by the remains of the fire:

“Okay, if you’re sure. Alright, see you later. Bye. Love you. Bye.”

She closes the phone and assesses Patrick across the fire.

“Ready?” she asks.

“For what?” He says. “Where is everyone?”

But at that moment Pete and Kobra appear, with Andy in tow: they’re carrying small buckets of water.

“What time is it?” Patrick asks, disconcerted.

“Just after seven,” says Andy. “We were just checking out a canyon.”

“Oh,” says Patrick, and then Joe emerges from the other tent, looking mussed and rumpled, and asks

“What’s going on?” So Patrick doesn’t have to.

“We’re heading home,” says Fun Ghoul. He and Jet are occupied dismantling the last tent, and loading the parts up into the van. “Guess you guys passed testing, congrats.” And nods towards Fuck Machine, who shrugs and puts her phone away.

“Home?” Joe asks.

“Killjoy HQ, as you might call it,” she looks at Pete.

“Awesome,” he says, stands up and dusts himself off. “About time.”

“Don’t push it,” Kobra says with humor in his eyes, and they board the trans am. Kobra’s driving with Ghoul up front, so Jet Star passes out cans of Power Pup. Patrick chokes down half (it’s no wonder everyone’s skinny here, he thinks vaguely). Then they hunker down for a long trip – Patrick’s regretting not getting up earlier and stretching his legs, the van is stifling, even with the windows open and the scenery is flat and red. At last they pull up in front of a diner. It looks like something from America in the 1950s, except that the vending machine out front is marked with the BL/IND logo and a hand-made antennae and satellite are perched crookedly on the roof. As they pile out, Fuck Machine stops Pete with a hand on his arm:

“About Poison,” she says, then stops.

“There was an incident a few years ago,” says Jet Star: “It kind of messed him up.”

“He’s not _messed up_ ,” Fuck Machine says sharply, and Jet holds up his hands:

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know. Sorry.”

Patrick and Pete share a look – Pete’s eyebrows go up nearly into his hairline, and now Patrick’s thinking about scars or an eyepatch or maybe a wheelchair like Dr. D, perhaps a robotic limb or two. Fuck Machine leads them through into the main room – booths and tables and a counter though the glass display cases are empty, all red leather and chrome. The small girl they’d met on their first night is sitting at a booth, coloring in, but on seeing the strangers she stops and looks wary.

“It’s alright Gracie,” says Jet Star: “They’re friends.”

She says nothing but continues to watch them as Fuck Machine leads them all through to a back room.

“There’s a tap out back, you can wash up and stuff,” she indicates a door. “Leave your stuff anywhere, just remember where you put it.”

“You’ll be wanting these back,” Kobra offers a crate, and inside are their weapons. They all grab at once – Patrick didn’t realize how accustomed he’d been getting to having his gun at his side. As he holsters it, he immediately feels better and tells himself that’s it, he’s going to start being rational now. 

“Okay,” Fuck Machine and Kobra look at each other. “I guess you’re ready.” Her eyes go towards a door with a faded poster pinned to it. It’s a BL/IND logo, but defaced, so it reads KILL THE PERFECT instead of TOMORROW WILL BE PERFECT, the first word scribbled over and the second and third amended. Patrick can only assume this is Party Poison’s domain. “Who wants to go first?”

“We have to go one at a time?” Andy raises his eyebrows.

“Yes,” says Kobra, and doesn’t elaborate, so Pete says,

“I’ll go,” and Fuck Machine says

“The rest of you can wait in the main room.”

“Feels like I’m getting sent to the principal’s office,” says Joe out of the corner of his mouth, as they take their place at a booth. Jet Star offers them cans of soda, which they accept. Fun Ghoul is playing some kind of game with the little girl involving a ping pong ball and card houses, and no-one else is around. Pete is in talking to Poison for at least an hour – Patrick’s watch has stopped working in the atmosphere – and eventually Jet helps them hook their e-pads up to the wireless network and they talk some more about BL/IND and Pete’s operation. Jet is a good guy, and the friendliest of the Killjoys, which makes Patrick brave enough to ask at last:

“So…about Poison…”

“Yeah,” Jet looks uncomfortable and tugs on his hair, making it stand up directly from his head: “About him.”

“What happened?” Joe asks bluntly. “Does he like, have robot arms?” 

Great minds think alike, Patrick guesses, and he shares a small smile with Joe.

“No robot arms,” Jet cracks a half-smile. “Basically, he’s kind of damaged.” He lowers his voice and leans in, glancing back to Fun Ghoul who’s still occupied with the little girl: “A few years back, Kobra and Poison went into BL/INDspace together. I’d not long joined the crew, and I don’t know the details of the whole project, but they were trying to sabotage this project BL/IND was working on to wipe the memories of kids they’d taken off dissidents….anyway. Something went wrong. Like I said, I don’t know all the details, but the two of them were trapped in BL/INDspace and taken hostage by the Terminators-“

“I thought nothing material went in and out of BL/INDspace,” Andy says.

“It doesn’t,” says Jet. “But there’s not much point in keeping someone’s body alive when their mind is trapped in there. I think-“ He pauses. “Well. They were separated, Kobra nearly didn’t come back. Very narrow escape, as I understand it. Poison took it harder than he did – siblings, you know,” he shrugs.

“Wait – Kobra and Poison are brothers?” asks Patrick.

“Yeah,” says Andy. “Didn’t you know?”

“Seeing as no-one bothered to tell me, no I didn’t know,” says Patrick hotly.

“Have you been into BL/INDspace?” Joe asks Jet.

“Yeah,” Jet says. “Not for a long time, though. They’ve sealed our tunnels.”

At that moment, the door swings open and Pete enters. He looks serious and a little shaken. His eyes go to Andy instead of Patrick, which means he’s thinking about business, and then Andy gets up and heads for the door. Pete comes over and sits down next to Patrick.

“How was it?” Patrick murmurs, one hand automatically going to squeeze Pete’s fingers. 

“Weird,” Pete mutters under his breath. “Trick, we’ve got to do something.”

“We are doing something,” Patrick reminds him, and Pete flashes him an irritated side-glance. Well. If he’s going to be like that. Patrick reclaims his hand.  
Andy’s talk with Poison is shorter, and by the time he comes back Patrick’s dying of curiosity. He glances at Joe out of politeness, but Joe motions that Patrick should go, because he’s generous like that, so Kobra leads Patrick towards the back door and waits while he knocks, like an unobtrusive bodyguard.

“Come in!” someone calls. The voice is surprisingly high, and younger than Patrick was imagining. It’s dim inside – his eyes take a second to adjust to the low light, and when he’s blinked, he’s in a sort of command room, a desk, a low bunk, piles of paper everywhere, e-readers scattered around. The bed is unmade, and the walls are decorated with old posters – more BL/IND propaganda, creatively defaced, and some old bands and movie posters from earth, maps and charts. There’s a window, but the blinds are drawn, leaving the room dim and shadowed. Cross-legged on the bed is Party Poison. He looks – well, like his pictures, just a few more lines with round his eyes and mouth, bright red hair a little faded, showing dark roots. He has one of those faces which make age very difficult to judge: he could feasibly be anywhere from twenty-five to forty, with large hazel eyes and a serious, anxious expression. Now that Patrick knows it, the resemblance to Kobra is obvious, but its visual only: where Kobra is contained and calm and measured in everything he does, Poison is distracted and nervy. His hands flutter constantly, shredding a piece of paper, picking at his trousers, and his eyes are shadowed. He doesn’t meet Patrick’s gaze, but looks back and forth, near him then away again, but says,

“Have a seat,” gesturing the desk, so Patrick does. Poison gets up, goes to the far wall, and peels the corner of a map down before pinning it back.

“You were in Earth fleet?” He asks, abrupt.

“Yes,” says Patrick, biting down on the weird urge to add, “Sir.”

“That’s good,” says Poison: “We can always use people with military experience.”

“I wasn’t in the military branch. Mostly I just ferried things back and forth.”

“Still,” says Poison, and looks at the wall. Then: “You were discharged after the McCracken affair, I take it.”

“Pete told you about that.”

“Oh, I already knew. We had a vigil for Greta. I was wondering when he’d pay us a visit.”

Something clicks into place in Patrick’s mind. He rapidly scans his memory, frowning, but there’s nothing to explicitly contradict it. Its just another thing Pete has failed to tell him regarding this mission:

“You’ve met before. You and Pete.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” says Poison thoughtfully. “I mean, I wasn’t Party Poison then. He was barely Pete Wentz. So you couldn’t precisely say _we’ve_ met, though he once knew the person my brother was, before all this. They used to go around together back in the old days, before everything got so serious. I was called Nightbird in those days. Kobra was just The Kid. He’s never met Kobra and Party Poison.”

“…..”

“So in any case,” says Poison, looking out the window: “You came at a good time. We’ve nearly re-routed one of the tunnels back into BL/INDspace.”

“I’m not a hacker,” says Patrick.

“No,” says Poison, “But you brought one. And in anycase we can use your skills once we’re back inside the interface.”

“Oh,” says Patrick. “Okay then.” He has no idea what Poison means by that, but he senses it wouldn’t do much good to gainsay him.

Poison nods. Then suddenly he looks Patrick in the eye and blinks, and its like he comes back to the present. Suddenly the attentive host, he says:

“Well, I’m afraid there won’t be a great deal for you to do until we’re back in. I hope you won’t be bored. Please, make yourselves at home though – what’s ours is yours, and so on.”

“Thank you,” says Patrick, and returns to the main lounge. He’s cross and bewildered. As soon as he gets the chance he grabs Pete by the upper arm and pulls him into a corner:

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew them?” he asks crossly.

“I didn’t say I didn’t,” Pete points out. “They had different personas back then – different aliases and all. I don’t _know_ them know them, Patrick – I don’t even know their real names.”

“That’s a shit excuse and you know it.” Patrick folds his arms. Pete rolls his eyes and blows his breath out.

“Patrick,” he says. “You know as well as I do I can’t tell you everything. It’s for your own good.”

“Not when I’m part of the mission!” Patrick hisses. He wants to punch or slap Pete on the arm. Pete shrugs and looks to his left. 

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

Pete looks at him.

“Pete!” Patrick does slap him then, hard.

“OW, motherfucker! Nothing, okay? Jesus, calm down. You’ve been acting like such a fucking drama queen since we got here.”

“Uhhhh…..excuse me?” Patrick laughs a bitter little laugh. “Did you just call _me_ a drama queen? Did you, Peter Wentz, just call _me_ a drama queen? Am I the only one seeing the irony here?”

Pete narrows his eyes goes to push Patrick aside:

“I don’t have time for this,” he says.

“Oh sure,” says Patrick, and the little devil on his shoulder which pops up at times like this considers it the perfect time to put in an appearance: “Too busy having fun with your new BFF Kobra, naturally. Why don’t you go complain to him about your whiny bitch of a boyfriend, I’m sure he’d figure out a way to make you feel better.”  
Pete opens his mouth, then closes it. Expression flashes across his face, between hurt and guilt and something else Patrick can’t pin down, then he says

“Fine. If you’re gonna be like that, I will,” turns on his heel and leaves Patrick standing, caught between vindication and embarrassment, until Jet takes pity on him and invites him over to discuss the handling on a new line of Endoan cruisers.

 

*

Poison was right about one thing – until Andy, Kobra and the other hackers can re-route the tunnel BL/IND blocked, there isn’t a whole lot for anyone else to do. Joe helps out with some mechanical repairs, and Pete and Kobra spend a lot of time talking and disappearing together, which Patrick finds increasingly difficult. He and Pete aren’t fighting, exactly, but they aren’t exactly not-fighting either, and its wearing on him. All four of them have been assigned a back room to dump their bedrolls and stuff, so they sleep facing away from each other and are generally acting more like acquaintances than a couple. They contact the ship and assure Bill and Travie they’re all alive and accounted for, and Bill teases that they’re redecorating the captain’s quarters ready for their return.

“I’m thinking a Valentine’s theme,” he says to Patrick: “Lots of red, pink, maybe some purple trim. We can definitely spring for some heart shaped pillows and shit after that deal on  
Gamma IV. What are your feelings on lace trim?”

“Bill,” says Patrick, and Bill’s voice immediately changes:

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks. He comes over crackly and out of focus on the vid screen. Patrick’s taking advantage of a rare moment of privacy to talk to Bill, cross legged on his bedroll. Everyone else is out or busy. He moves the pad around to try to Bill back into focus, and ends up on Pete’s bunk, which is unmade and smells like him.

“Nothing,” says Patrick.

“Don’t bullshit me, Stump. I know what nothing sounds like, and that’s not it.”  


Patrick sighs. “It’s not a good time Bill.”

“What are you talking about? It’s the perfect time. You’re alone, I’m alone, we’re connected by the modern wonders of the interstellar wireless network. So. Spill.”  
Patrick rolls his eyes. The inside of his chest feels tight, because if he says it, it will make it real, and he doesn’t want it to be real, so he just says

“Pete’s being a dick.”

“What else is new?”

“Not like that. I mean, it turns out he knew Party Poison and Kobra from way back when. I’ve felt like a third wheel since I got here and now I know why. I’ve stumbled into a college reunion for unlikely cult heroes and resistance leaders.”

Bill laughs, then looks apologetic. “Sorry man. But seriously, you know what Pete’s like. He’s crazy about you. He’s probably just excited and distracted by the mission and everything.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“It’s – yeah I,” Patrick starts and stops. Bill waits. Patrick leans over the pad and says in a rush:

“I’m afraid Pete likes Kobra, I mean not like likes like he likes everyone, I mean there’s _chemistry_ between them, chemistry like in some stupid movie, you know? And I mean you should see Kobra, he’s hot, like standard-issue hot with cheekbones and everything and I’m me and you’ve seen me, and Pete’s like – Pete.”

Bill stares at him for a long moment.

“Patrick,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Patrick miserably.

“Patrick, are you hearing yourself? Let me say it again. Pete. Is. Crazy. About. You. He’s in love with you. He’s not gonna fuck off with the next pretty person who pays him a bit of attention. He lived like that for years. He was miserable. Since he met you he’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him. Don’t you trust him?”

“Yes,” says Patrick.

“Well, trust him then!”

Patrick’s stomach churns. He feels sick with unhappiness, and he knows Bill is right, he’s being crazy, this is crazy, but he and Pete haven’t kissed in three days and he’s starting to feel it on a physical level. 

“You’re right,” he says to Bill.

“Are you guys fighting?”

“Not – not exactly.”

“But not exactly not fighting either,” says Bill, the perceptive bastard.

“No,” says Patrick.

“Talk to him,” Bill urges. “He probably doesn’t even realize how you’re feeling. You know he gets all wrapped up in things.”

“Yeah,” Patrick acknowledges, because that’s true, but its equally true that he and Pete are being decidedly cool with each other.

“So you’ll tell him.”

“Maybe,” Patrick says.

“That’s the wrong answer.”

“Look,” Patrick blows his breath out. “You’re probably right – I’m being ridiculous. It’s nothing, I should get over it.” He’s lying. He won’t get over it, and he knows it deep down, but sometimes Patrick’s stubborn streak is his own worst enemy. He won’t be the first to apologise. Pete usually has no problem apologising, but first he has to notice he’s upset someone, and that isn’t always his strongest point. Compatibility flaw, he thinks, and suppresses it.

“Alright,” Bill says, looking unconvinced. “Well. I’ve got to go. Talk to you soon Trick.”

“Bye,” says Patrick, and logs off. There’s laughter from the diner – Pete, high pitched and braying, and after a second a low chuckle Patrick’s never heard before, rising to a full out laugh that can only be Kobra. Patrick lies down on his bedroll and shoves his earbuds into his ears, but there’s nothing he wants to hear.

*

“Morning sunshine,” Fun Ghoul wakes Patrick up by throwing a t-shirt on top of him. “Ready to roll?”

“What?” Patrick sits up. It’s nowhere near morning – almost pitch black outside with a few stars glinting cool in the desert sky. Joe flicks the staticky central light on.

“It’s go time,” says Fun Ghoul: “BLIND tagged one of our informants and we’re gonna get him out before they liquidize him.”

“Oh!” Patrick springs up. “Do I – what should I bring?”

“Just your weapons” says Jet Star, popping up behind Fun Ghoul “Don’t overload yourself.”

Patrick looks around and resists the trained urge to grab his backpack and travel kit. Joe and Andy are on the other side of the room, pulling t-shirts over their boxer shirts and looking for pants. Patrick sleeps in a t-shirt, but he scrambles for a jacket because the desert nights are cold. He looks around for Pete, but he’s absent – this isn’t unusual, Pete doesn’t sleep much, and even when they’re sharing a bed Patrick frequently wakes up to find him not there. The Killjoys lead them out into the diner, where Pete and Kobra are standing by the door all geared up – there’s no sign of Fuck Machine or Poison.

“We switch off,” says Jet Star quietly in response to the unspoken question. “Somebody’s got to stay behind for the kid, you know? If something happened to us…”  
Patrick nods and heads out to the van, then stops abruptly. 

He’s never seen the desert at night before. He was born off-earth, and spent most of his life in controlled ambience environments. The sky is purple-black, stars cool and sharp and glittering. The sand is washed mauve, frozen in waves like an ocean, dunes rippling away towards the horizon. Small lights pick out the shanty towns like electric fireflies. Patrick’s not a poetic guy, but he’s never seen anything like this before, and it makes him want to – do something. Make something. He looks for Pete, wanting to express this sense that’s come over him, but Pete is oblivious to their natural surroundings, busy moving stuff around in the back of the van so they can all fit. Patrick climbs in after him, and holds his tongue.

Kobra and Fun Ghoul get up front, and once they’re on the road, Jet pulls out a laser pen and projects a map onto the floor of the bus.  
“This is the chemical plant where our guy works.”

“We’re going into the City?” Pete asks.

“Not quite. It’s close though. It’s a major research outpost, pretty big, which is bad for us in one way but good in another, because there are more entrances are more places to hide. Our guy is supposed to rendezvous here,” he indicates one exit: “At 06:00, when the guard changes. There’s no security cam on this door, so the plan is for you guys to make a distraction while we get our guy out of there. There are radiation and fire alarms here – here – and here.” He moves the laser to make three quick circles on the map. “This one is the most accessible – Kobra will take you guys through the basement entrance, seeing as you’ve worked together before. Meanwhile me and Fun Ghoul will take out the guards and take Joe as a marksman for backup.”

Joe is an excellent shot, Patrick knows, and holds an advanced phaser certification, but the only thing he’s used to shooting is targets. (Andy is even better, when he fires, but as a fairly militant pacifist, he hesitates so long deciding whether the harm can be justified his marks frequently escape before he does so). Patrick nods. Unbelievably, the back of his mind is still stuck on the fact that Pete and Kobra have found a reason to be together again, which is plain dumb because, hello, he’s there too. He’s not sure he likes this new part of himself much.

It’s a long drive to the outpost. The van is hot, and though Patrick hasn’t long woken up he didn’t get enough sleep, and he finds himself leaning against the wall and dozing with Joe on one side and the other three talking quietly. The sound of Pete’s voice, excited and suppressed, is soothing to him even in the circumstances. He jolts awake when the van bumps over a rock:

“So I tell the guy, you’ve got the wrong man, he doesn’t know anything. Anderson doesn’t believe me, so I toss him a fake, he lets Trick go and we end up at the Stargazer together. If you know what I mean,” Pete wiggles his eyebrows and Kobra laughs and says

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

“Exactly!” Pete says, delighted with the reference. Then he sees Patrick is awake: “Oh, Trick!” he beams. “I was just telling M – telling Kobra the story of how I swept you off your feet and won your fair hand.”

Patrick glares at him. “It wasn’t like that,” he says.

“It was totally like that,” Pete says smugly and pulls his legs up to his chest like a little kid. Kobra grins at Pete. It’s the first real smile Patrick’s seen from him. It’s pretty. And it grates. Joe looks worriedly at Patrick, and Patrick pokes him in the leg, hard, because Pete is a dick and sometimes Patrick’s a dick too.

“Ow!” says Joe. “What was that for?!”

“You’re in my spot,” says Patrick, and Joe gives him a look like he’s gone insane, but draws his leg up further. Joe looks at him like he’s gone crazy so Patrick turns and looks miserably out of the window. Sand dunes wave away into the night.


	4. Chapter 4

They pull up at dawn. The light is changing: the sky is pale, red and purple streaks. Next to Patrick, Joe has fallen asleep but comes awake with a start when they brake by the cover of a few scrubby bushes. The compound is a blocky hulk on the horizon. Kobra rolls down the window and leans his upper body out, holding a pair of binoculars:

“Pretty clear,” he reports. “Next ground patrol is in twenty minutes, but watch towers are operational.”

“Alright,” says Jet Star, who seems to be taking the lead in this expedition: “Get kitted, and take Pete and Patrick and head around to the basement.”

Kobra reaches for one of the boxes, and pulls out a set of white body suits like the Dracs wear, complete with masks. One of them has an old blood stain in the middle of the chest, which somebody has attempted to scrub out, and Patrick guesses the Killjoys took them from dead Dracs. Pete and Kobra strip to their underwear before getting into the suits: Patrick just pulls his on over his clothes.  
“You’ll melt,” says Fuck Machine. Patrick shrugs. They all synchronise their communicators, then Kobra, Pete and Patrick get out and start walking a broad circle around the perimeter. Every now and then, they have to freeze as a search light pans around them: costumes or not, their movements would be flagged as unauthorized. The compound is surrounded by a barbed wire fence, with watchtowers at each point of the compass. At last they come to the south gate, and Kobra tells them to wait: Drac patrols go in and out of the building at intervals, and their best bet is to wait until one is going in, and join them. They crouch behind a jutting shelf of rock. Patrick looks at Pete, strange and unsettling in the Drac suit, only his dark eyes visible through the holes. It’s like looking at a stranger – no, stop that, he tells himself. This is no time for dramatics. After several minutes, there’s a sound from behind them – rat-a-tat-tat, rising to a faint thud-thud-thud and then louder, and 

Patrick turns and squints to see a line of dots, moving forward at a jogging pace.

“Here we go,” murmurs Kobra, and the dots resolves themselves into figures, and then finally into a double line of Dracs, running in formation up towards the compound. Pete tugs Patrick’s wrist, and they edge around to the side of the rock shelf, waiting for the patrol to get close enough. The Dracs run like cogs in a machine, perfectly in time, all eyes forward and limbs moving in the same arc, blank masked faces set in the same non-expression. They’re 100 meters away now, Patrick tenses ready for action…fifty meters….twenty…

“Now,” says Kobra, and gives Pete a little shove forward on the shoulders. The patrol is practically on top of them, and at the last second, just as they pass, Kobra, Pete and Patrick slip and attach themselves to the ends of the lines. The patrol doesn’t falter for a second.

As they move up to the gates of the compound, a siren blares from the building. Patrick’s stomach drops, sure they’re found out, but instead the barbed wire gates start to open inwards, as a pair of security cameras streak over the patrol. Fuck Machine was right: Patrick’s sweating like hell in the Drac suit. He breathes in and out, trying to slow his heartbeat. He focuses on Pete’s back, trying to find the familiar movement of his breathing beneath the Drac getup. The patrol moves up to the building. The main doors open, but there are heavily armed guards standing at either side. They’re not Dracs, more like humans with big muscles and an implanted array of cybernetic body parts. Each has a robotic eye in the right or left side of its head, and as the patrol moves in, the eyes move on their own to scan over the Dracs. It’s incredibly creepy, but Patrick forces his eyes straight ahead and keeps his movements regular. Inside, the walls are white and stark – the entrance branches off into three corridors. There’s a constant whirr-hum of machinery in the air, and it smells like chemicals. The second they’re inside, Kobra glances up, locates the nearest security camera and pulls Pete a Patrick into the next corridor, out of reach of its gleaming black eye.

“Keep away from those,” he says quietly: “Anyone watching us is gonna realize we’re not Dracs pretty quickly. Then he takes out his communicator and says quietly,

“We’re in, Jet, do you copy? Go time in T minus 15.”

Jet Star’s voice comes through fuzzy: “Copy that. We’re at R45.2, V96.19.”

“Roger, Kobra out.”

They’ve figured out from the plan how to get to the basement, and as long as nothing’s changed, they should be able to open the door with a skeleton keycard Dr. D made. They move through the corridors as quietly as possible: they pass a few Dracs in the corridors, but they all seem hyper-focused on their own tasks, moving like drones. There’s one goose-flesh raising moment when Kobra grabs Patrick’s arm suddenly and pushes him flat against the wall – a large figure in black sweeps by at a right angle, mostly robot, some flesh. A whole cluster of beady black eyes are imbedded into its skull, like an insect, and its six powerful arms move purposefully. Each ends in a double set of pincers, and from one, it drags the burnt corpse of a Drac behind it.

“Terminator,” says Kobra Kid quietly. “Much smarter than Dracs. They’re kind of the enforcers, root out any errors in the system.”

“Sooo we’ll try not to run into those,” says Pete.

“Right,” says Kobra. They wait until the terminator passes, then move out into the corridor. At last they come to a panel in the floor. Its sealed by a combination lock, but Kobra aims his phaser at the bolts until they melt.

“Get ready to shoot,” he says, and the door falls inwards.

The basement is way less slick and clean than the hallways – roughly hewn out of dirt with wood supports, a few computer terminals and worksurfaces hastily erected. Behind the terminals are tanks bearing ‘poison’ and ‘radioactive’ symbols. As the door falls, Dracs startle and drop their work, fumble for their guns and start towards the entrance. They’re too dumb to aim upwards, and maybe that’s what gives Patrick a false sense of security, like this is going to be easy, they can do this, they’ll be in and out and trip the alarm no problem.  
Maybe that’s why he isn’t watching Pete. It’s not his job to watch Pete, obviously, Pete does all kinds of dangerous shit daily and did long before Patrick ever met him. But now there’s Kobra. And that changes things, apparently.

They dispatch the first group of Dracs pretty easily, then Kobra drops into the basement with Pete right behind him. Patrick’s readying himself for the drop, when there’s a flash and a gasp from below, and Patrick goes cold. A terminator, concealed by the tanks, is suddenly in the middle of the basement. And shot for Kobra. And Pete, because fuck him, has shoved Kobra out of the way and is now crumpling to the ground with one hand pressed to his stomach, eyes wide with surprise, because he’s too stupid to realize what has happened to him. 

“PETE!” screams Patrick, thinking no, no, no, this isn’t happening, this can’t be happening, go back, make it three seconds ago, two seconds, make it happen differently, let me go first, let – it’s too late. Cold horror washes over him because it’s already happened, and Kobra is just standing there firing on the Terminator, like that matters, like –

\- Patrick scrambles down into the basement, drops the last three feet, stumbles on landing and half-collapses next to Pete. His brain is stuck on no no no and all he want is for Pete to be alive, if Pete’s alive they can fix anything else, just –

\- Pete’s alive. His eyes are open and he’s still wearing that stupid expression of surprise, but there’s a hole in his gut and red, warm blood is pulsing steadily from between his fingers.

“Oh,” he says like someone just told him they’re all out of soda or the engines need de-greasing. 

“Shut up,” says Patrick viciously, pressing his hands down over Pete’s: “How could you –“ _How could you do this to me?_ Pete risked himself for _him_ and now Patrick had warm blood all  
over his fingers and he’d have to live without –

No. No, no no. No-one was dying. In the meantime, Kobra has dispatched the Terminator and the remaining Dracs, hit the alarm and has his communicator out:

“Jet, code red, we need help getting out of here.”

And that goddam alarm is blaring, Patrick wants to it to _shut up_ because it’s too close to the panicked blare of his own brain, CATASTROPHE, WORST CASE SCENARIO.

Kobra kneels next to Patrick and says,

“Let me,” and he’s torn a strip off his shirt which he goes to press to the wound, and Patrick wants to say get off, don’t touch him, but Kobra knows what he’s doing so he can’t. When Kobra puts  
pressure on the wound, Pete makes a small, pained sound that sears itself into Patrick’s brain indelibly. He grits his teeth against the urge to punch Kobra, and cups Pete’s face with his hands instead. Pete’s eyes are glazed with pain, and he’s breathing in shocky little gasps.

“Pete,” says Patrick. His voice comes out sounding like gravel. Pete makes an effort to focus on him. Patrick’s hands are wet with Pete’s blood, and now it’s on Pete’s face and neck too. He has more to say – hang on, it’s alright, how could you you piece of shit, but none of it forms into words so he just says Pete’s name again, and Pete tries to smile, but its more of a pained grimace. 

“Jet, we need help now,” Kobra clips out, and the communicator crackles: 

“ETA six minutes,” - Jet’s voice. “Bob’s out, we’re clearing your path.”

“Hurry,” says Kobra, and despite the pressure he’s putting on the wound blood is seeping around his fingers. Pete’s eyes close.

“Pete, no!” snaps Patrick. “Look at me. Look at me, Pete, keep your eyes open.”

“Pa –rick,” says Pete, and there’s blood in his mouth: “Srry.”

“Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare,” Patrick says, hearing the hysteria rise in his voice: “Don’t you apologise to me Pete, you’re not going anywhere.”

Regret flashes across Pete’s face and his eyelids flutter, then he moans as Kobra adjusts the pressure. Patrick realises he’s crying, hot tears sliding down his face to his collar – he uses one hand to dash them away then returns it to Pete’s cheek. “You’re going to be fine,” he insists, and Pete gives him a look full of doubt and regret, and then passes out.

“No,” says Patrick.

There’s a clattering noise from above and the sound of phaser fire, then Jet calls down

“Clear!”

Kobra has tied off his shirt around Pete’s stomach, trying to stem the blood, and now he shifts to lift Pete in a fireman’s carry. Inside, Patrick is screaming – don’t touch him, let me, and the hysterical sick pulse of denial under it, but on the outside he’s very calm, and helps pass Pete up to Jet and Ghoul before grabbing Jet’s hand and scrambling out of the basement. 

“Bob’s out,” Jet says to Kobra. “We sent Joe and Andy back to the diner with him.”

“Great,” says Kobra, as though anything could ever be great again, and Ghoul says

“Let’s move it,” and he and Kobra move to the front in well-practiced synchronization, phasers forward and checking the coast’s clear while Jet carries Pete and Patrick tries to hold himself together, to  
not puke or start screaming. He wants to keep watching Pete, but at the same time he can’t look, if he’s not looking Pete can’t die because Pete wouldn’t do that to Patrick. 

Maja was right. They never should have come here.

What is he going to tell Andy?

The radiation alarm is still blaring the place down, and Kobra and Fun Ghoul take out a few more Dracs on the way out of the compound, but terminators and human staff have mostly rushed for the reactor as they’d planned. They make it to the trans am without further incident - one Drac comes extremely close to blowing Patrick’s brains out, taken out at the last split second by Fun Ghoul, who  
yells

“Look!” at Patrick like Patrick is expected to focus like nothing’s happening, and then they’re back at the van, Kobra takes the wheel, and Jet lays Pete down in the back carefully, carefully because Pete is still breathing. Kobra’s shirt is saturated with blood.

“You okay?” Jet says to Patrick, and Patrick stares at him – is _he_ okay?

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” says Fun Ghoul. “Like you’ve gone totally white man. Don’t pass out, okay, we don’t have time to take care of both of you.” 

“Okay,” says Patrick and sits down hard because he doesn’t have a choice all of a sudden. The van floor comes up to meet him. His eyes trail from Pete’s unconscious face to his upturned hand, scraped knuckles to the floor, fingers a helpless loose curl, and Patrick is incandescent with the rage that virtual strangers should see Pete like this, touch him in this state. Pete would hate it, would never allow it, always with the guarded extroversion and the public faces. 

“The bullet’s still inside,” says Jet.

Patrick gags.

“That’s actually a good thing,” he goes on: “It’s stopping him bleeding out right now.”

Patrick thinks Jet needs some serious re-education in the concept of what a good thing is. Meanwhile Fun Ghoul is talking into his communicator:  
“Maybe an hour? Okay we’ll try. Thanks Doc.”

“Dr. D is actually a doctor,” Jet assures Patrick. “He can help.”

“There’s no-one closer?” Patrick exclaims.

“No-one we can trust. You don’t wanna just take someone’s word for it in the Badlands.” Jet and Ghoul share a significant look, clearly remembering some incident.

“Dr. D is the best anyway,” says Fun Ghoul. “He amputated his own leg. It was badass.” Jet opens his eyes wide and elbows him hard, mouthing, ‘INNAPROPRIATE’, but Fun Ghoul says

“What?! It’s a good thing!” 

Jet might have replied, but in that second there’s a whizz and a PING as something connects with the van door, and Kobra calls from the front:

“We’ve got company!”

“Shit!” Fun Ghoul yelps as the van swerves, leaning forward to catch himself on his hands. Pete’s body is jostled to the side but he’s unconscious enough that his eyelids don’t even flutter. Patrick crawls forwards on his hands and knees to secure him. There’s another PING! And a screech of metal, and an acrid smell of smoke starts to fill the van, as Jet and Fun Ghoul scramble for the windows and take aim on the convoy of Dracs that is now tailing them.

“Little help here!” Kobra yells – Dracs have pulled up alongside and are firing for the driver’s window, he’s swerving chaotically in an attempt to avoid them. Patrick looks down at Pete but there’s literally nothing he can do to help him right now except try to make sure he’s secure so he positions him against some of the backpacks and the heavier crates in the back of the van (Pete is terrifyingly still and limp and he feels cold, which is so wrong because Pete is always warmer than Patrick). Then he unholsters his gun, and clambers up between the front seats so he can take aim at the pair of Dracs who have pulled up alarmingly close on a motorbike. He leans across Kobra and aims for the tyres. It’s good – his first shot goes wide, but his second takes their front tyre out with a pop-hiss, and the bike veers away – the Drac not driving shoots at them in response but misses. There’s a screech and burn of rubber as they go down:

“Nice shot,” says Kobra with his eye glued to the road as they leave the Dracs in the distance:

‘Fuck you’, thinks Patrick but the van steadies so he crawls back into the back of the van, where Jet and Fun Ghoul are finishing off the Dracs that have pulled up at their sides. That done, they reach back and high-five each other without even looking, clearly a move born of years of practice. Patrick crawls back to Pete. If possible, he looks paler. Patrick doesn’t know what to do, so he picks up Pete’s hand and threads their fingers together, squeezing hard enough to hurt if Pete were conscious, and tries not to puke as he thinks about what Pete has done to him, how he’s always had all the friends he wants and been on good terms with his family, but never before been exposed to the possibility of a loss that could ruin him. It isn’t fair.

They do make it in less than an hour, because Kobra floors it, and also takes some shortcuts through less-than-savoury neighborhoods after hushed consultation with the others. Shanty towns litter the desert, and it’s made perfectly clear where visitors are not welcome. Some are dark and boarded up; others gated, manned by wary zonerunners and hostile gangs. They sacrifice a few minutes for Fun Ghoul to jump down and exchange words with a particularly tall and muscled guard, next to whom he looks like a child, but who clearly owes him a favor or at least the time of day. Fun Ghoul makes a few broad expansive gestures, his back to the van, and the guard’s expression goes from completely grim to something approaching approval. He steps back and calls to someone behind the gates, which then creak open. Fun Ghoul turns and gives them a thumbs up and does a little jump, back up to the van – Patrick half hates him for being so cheerful at a time like this, but in fairness he’s bought them a shortcut. Maybe the guy’s just seen enough shit that a casual acquaintance bleeding out in the van sits pretty low on his scale of things, or maybe he’s always like this.

“Go,” he says to Kobra unnecessarily, and Kobra backs up then eases the van through the narrow gates – he at least seems concerned and focused. Patrick’s pretty useless by this point – he’s just sitting on the floor holding Pete’s hand and willing him to breathe, eyes glued to the slight rise and fall of his narrow chest. So far it seems to be working. Patrick’s brain knows that rationally he’s not helping, but he can’t stop it. If he looks away Pete might die, but not even Pete would have the audacity to die when Patrick’s staring right at him. Jet is being more practical – he keeps pressure on the wound and rinses off their makeshift dressings with alcohol a couple of times, and makes Patrick use the alcohol to wipe off an open scratch down his face which Patrick has zero recollection of getting and can’t feel in the slightest. The Killjoys talk to each other – mostly short, coded exchanges that make reference to events or things Patrick doesn’t understand, but its functional, and quiet, for which he’s grateful. 

“This is the home stretch,” Jet Star says quietly to Patrick when they pass a wooded sign. It seems to be a mile marker. Patrick nods without looking up. 

Show Pony is hanging out by the door of the shack, waiting for them. As they pull in, s/he nods inside their helmet and gives a little wave, runs inside then runs back out again with a sheet made into a stretcher.

“Doc’s all ready for you,” s/he says, then “Oh shit,” peering into the van and seeing the state of Pete, which doesn’t help Patrick’s state of mind one bit. Show Pony helps Jet manoeuvre Pete out of the van and then onto the stretcher and inside. Pete doesn’t respond. Patrick stands aside feeling useless and Fun Ghoul pats his shoulder in a way he probably thinks is reassuring, but in truth has Patrick clenching his fists until his nails leave white half-moons in his palms. 

“You might wanna stay out here,” says Fun Ghoul.

“No,” says Patrick. 

“Dr. D’s got it – he really is the best. But it, ah, it won’t be pretty.”

Patrick shrugs He owes it to Pete to watch, and in any case Pete might come round at some point and then Patrick needs to be there.

“Oh-kay then,” says Fun Ghoul, and goes to help Kobra, who is looking over the damage to the van. Kobra’s calm-faced, unruffled as ever. _‘He didn’t deserve it’_. That’s a horrible thought, as disrespectful to Pete’s choice in protecting Kobra as it is inhumane. But he’s thought it now, feelings clarified, and it isn’t going away, so Patrick turns and ducks into the hut, breathing the cool air.  
Dr. D has Pete laid out on a table and hooked up to a canister of oxygen. There are a couple of needles in his arm, and looking up, Patrick sees they’re connected to IV bags, only one of which has a pole and the other of which is just set down on a table. From his chair, Dr. D is already hard at work, whistling as he operates something that look almost like an old fashioned pliers. He’s wearing plastic gloves like surgeons do, and God, Patrick hasn’t even considered all the dirt out here. Jet is assisting Dr. D, handing him things before he can even ask for them.

“Sit down before you fall down, kid,” he calls to Patrick, and Patrick has suddenly no choice but to obey. It’s like the command triggered something in Patrick’s body, because his knees give out and he has to stagger backwards towards one of the chairs. 

“Got it,” says Dr. D suddenly, and there’s a clink as he drops the bloody bullet into a pan. “Alright let’s close up.”

‘So that’s it?’ Patrick wants to ask: ‘He’s gonna be okay?’ But he can’t get the words out. Fun Ghoul comes in and gives him a sympathetic salute before heading to a backroom. Jet and Dr. D work for a  
few minutes more and then Dr. D says

“Okay.”

Patrick stares at them with wide eyes. Jet says:

“He won’t bleed to death now. We just have to watch for infection and shock.”

Patrick continues to stare at him. He guesses nobody does sugar coating in the desert.

“Come on,” Jet says, “Let’s get cleaned up. Pete’s not going to wake up anytime soon.”

“How do you know?” Patrick asks.

“Well, because he’s extremely drugged,” Jet says. “Honestly. Dr. D is gonna stay out here anyway. There’s nothing you can do.”

That last phrase sounds kind of terrible, but Jet is right, and in any case Patrick doesn’t want to sit here anymore in case the others come back in and he has to talk to them. He follows Jet back to the washroom, which is just a sink and toilet and the rusted remains of a shower: just the hose and the base of a cubicle.

“It works,” says Jet, and turns the hose on. He takes off his shirt and starts to spray the blood and dirt off himself.

“I can’t believe he did that,” says Patrick finally. He doesn’t know if he means Pete or Kobra. Pete, surely. Kobra didn’t technically do anything.

Jet side-eyes him and continues washing blood of his arm.

“It’s so….” Patrick trails off.

Pause.

“You’re together, right?” Jet asks.

“You can tell.”

“It’s obvious.”

“Oh.”

“People don’t have to be constantly making out in order to be obviously together. It’s more like….I guess, partnership. Co-ordination. Like Party Poison and Fuck Machine.”

“Party Poison and Fuck Machine are together?”

“Oh yeah. They’re married.”

Maybe Patrick should have asked Pete to marry him. Maybe it’s too late now.

When they’ve washed up, Jet finds Patrick a clean shirt and a pair of pants that are too long.

“Thanks,” Patrick says. “For everything. You’ve been very kind to me, Jet.”

“It’s no problem. You’ve had a long day.”

Patrick laughs, slightly hysterically, and sits down on the edge of a bunk. “You can say that again.”

“Why don’t you try to sleep?” Jet asks.

“I couldn’t,” says Patrick. “I want to see Pete. I know –“ he cuts Jet off before he can start reasoning: “I know, he won’t wake up soon….but I just want to sit with him.”

“Well – I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Jet says. “You should at least eat and drink something though, don’t make yourself sick.”

Patrick nods though he doesn’t think he’ll be able to, and goes back into the front room to sit on one of the wobbly chairs and stare at Pete. He possibly looks worse – pale beneath the oxygen mask with deep shadows under his eyes, and lines of pain and tension around his mouth. 

‘Why did you do it?’ Patrick wants to ask. ‘Don’t you care about me?’ And the bitch of it is, even if Pete doesn’t, or if he did and stopped, or cares more about other – things now, Patrick is still in love with him. Exhausted, he puts his head down on the edge of the bunk and closes his eyes. Just as his eyelids are fluttering shut, he catches a brief glimpse of Kobra’s shadow, lingering in the doorway.


	5. Chapter 5

Patrick’s dreams are weird and piecemeal. They all concern him and Pete in some way, and often Joe and Andy. There’s a series of disconnected scenarios - a kind of crazy fairground in technicolor - school dance – a city at night - and then he’s on a boat. He’s dressed like some kind of fisherman, which is weird as hell, because he’s never been fishing in his life. It’s a very vivid dream – the individual crests of the waves are visible – but it lacks sound. Silent. It makes sense in the dream. In all of these scenarios, he’s trying to get to Pete, trying to reach him, overwhelmed with the dread of some kind of danger that shifts and wavers. The boat part is the clearest – he can’t find Pete – then he looks out, and Pete smiles at him from some place across the water – no defined place, but again in the dream its all perfectly reasonable, and he knows with a cold sinking horrible feeling that Pete is going to drown, unless he can reach out and grab his hand, which at first seems possible, but then it isn’t, and from across the water Pete smiles at him, enigmatic, Patrick tries to call to him, reach out –

\- And jerks awake on a jolt of adrenalin. Pain flashes from his neck to his shoulders, protesting the angle he fell asleep on. Fuck. He reaches to pinch the back of his neck and try to push things back into place, reality settling around him. Pete is still unconscious. I’ts possible he looks slightly less pale, but that could be wishing thinking.

“Hey,” says Show Pony who is doing is something with one of the IVs.

“Hey,” Patrick croaks. He wants to know, and he’s feeling reckless and like he has nothing to lose now, so he asks:

“How come you never take your helmet off?”

Show Pony turns to him, which is an eerie effect with the visor still in place.

“You wouldn’t like it if I did,” s/he says after a pause, and Patrick shrugs, not prepared to argue the point.

“Can you tell anything?” he asks, indicating Pete, and rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his other hand.

“Not really,” says Show Pony. “He has a slight fever, which we’d expect, but nothing to worry about yet. We’re keeping him sedated for a while.”

“Where are the others?” Patrick asks.

“Killjoys had to head back to the diner – let your friends know what’s going on.”

Patrick closes his eyes briefly. Right.

“Our communicators won’t cover the distance. We thought about having Dr. D say something on air but figured you wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“Yeah,” Patrick clears his throat. “Thanks. Thanks for that.”

Patrick blinks. The ship. Somehow, in the chaos, he’s forgotten that he ought to be calling Bill with this – there’s no technical third-in-command, but with Pete and Andy down here he would guess Bill would sort of step up as de facto leader. He thinks of Maja, and how she was right. Maja’s been around longer than Bill, but she keeps to herself a lot. Patrick can’t imagine her giving orders.

“What – what happened?” he clears his throat.

“We can’t get through. There was a dust storm early this morning and its blocking signals.”

“Right,” Patrick says.

“They should be back by late tonight. Still, you should take a break. Get something to eat and drink.”

Patrick looks to Pete’s still face, to Show Pony and back to Pete. He feels tired and slow, not the slightest bit rested from the sleep he had. Coffee would help. It’s worth a try. He gets up, feeling every muscle twinge and protest, squeezes Pete’s hand reflexively. If he wanted to kiss him, Show Pony wouldn’t care. He or she probably expects it. Instead he turns and heads towards the back rooms. The door to Dr. D’s booth is shut, and a red light with ‘ON AIR’ scribbled beneath it glows over the doorframe. He heads on through to the kitchen. The coffee is instant, the cheap kind you pour boiling water on, and the milk is powered. But its caffeinated and its hot. He’ll take it.

The day passes in stuttering blocks of time – sped up, then slow. Patrick eats – protein bars, Power Pup – but he doesn’t taste it. He wanders back and forth to Pete, who is mostly deeply out of it, but occasionally shifts and a pained expression crosses his face. He makes a small sound –

“Shh,” says Patrick, stroking his cheek: “It’s alright.” He’s been waiting more than a day for Pete wake up, and now, faced with the prospect, he says: “Go back to sleep Pete,” and Pete does.

Time is difficult to judge here, but the sun is sliding down the horizon again when there’s a hum of engines in the distance. Patrick has been trying not to think about what he’ll say to Andy. It’s not difficult. His mind keeps sliding all over the place, unable to stay on one thing. The engines approach; then cut out. To his surprise, though, the first voice he hears isn’t Andy at all – it’s Poison.

“ – split them up,” he’s saying. “Because we need to divide the people who are capable of navigating through it. I know –…”

A bit that’s muffled and then

“Ask him - … --- would want.”

Patrick stands up, trying to shake himself to full awareness as Poison and Fun Ghoul enter in quick succession`.

“Patrick,” says Poison: “We have a hole into BL/INDspace.”

Patrick blinks. 

“We need everyone who can pilot through it,” Poison goes on. The nervous, distracted aura is gone – this Poison is focused and intent and charismatic, and Patrick can see how the Killjoys would follow him anyway. Patrick isn’t a Killjoy though, and he doesn’t know what to do.

“Obviously it’s entirely your decision,” Poison pins him with big hazel eyes. “But I should tell you this is a time-sensitive opportunity. As soon as BL/IND find the hole they’ll plug it.”

“So we could be stuck in there,” says Patrick.

“Yes,” says Poison. “Or caught in there, or held hostage, or have your mind destroyed by torture. Like I said, I can’t tell you what to do. But this is a big opportunity. The hole is close to the central computer. If we can get to it, we could take BL/IND down.”

Patrick looks to Pete, and thinks about how excited he’d be if he was awake right now. He looks to Poison and Fun Ghoul.

“Decision time man,” says Fun Ghoul: “Clock’s a ticking. Your buddies are already in the van. You in or out?”

“In,” says Patrick, because apparently his brain has made the decision without his conscious say-so. Maybe he doesn’t want to waste the opportunity. Maybe he’s being noble. Maybe he wants to teach Pete a lesson about stupid risks and loyalty. Maybe he wants Pete to wake up and find Patrick gone, in danger, and feel some of what Patrick has had to feel. Poison nods once, approving.

“Go on out to the van then,” he says: “I need to speak to the Doc, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Patrick nods and heads out to the van, where Joe, Andy, Jet and Kobra are waiting. Kobra is busy with his phone, so Patrick looks at Andy, stricken, and says

“I-“

“It wasn’t your fault,” Andy says. He looks pale, grim and set like he hasn’t slept, with shadows under his eyes. “Pete would want us to do this.”

Patrick nods, unable to say anything. Joe reaches out to put a hand on his arm reassuringly and Patrick nods at him too, starting to feel like a puppet, then sits with his back against the van wall and stares straight in front of him.

“Where are we – “ He clears his throat. “Where are we going?”

In the front seats, Poison and Fun Ghoul look at each other.

“It’s a sort of a, think of a port,” Fun Ghoul gestures: “For plugging in to BL/INDspace. Lots of computers and sensors and shit, it’s pretty cool.”

A slightly pained look crosses Andy’s face at the description of his beloved technology.

“You okay?” Joe stage whispers to Patrick and Patrick says,

“Yeah,” says Patrick.

“Okay, stupid question,” Joe says. “But you’re holding up alright?”

“I guess so,” Patrick says. “I just wish…” and looks at his hands.

The drive. The desert barely changes, but they seem to be heading away from the settlements. There are more stretches of bare sand and scattered cacti, and fewer buildings. Poison and Fun Ghoul switch off driving (Fun Ghoul has too shift the driver’s seat as far forward as it will go so he can reach the pedals, and Patrick has a moment of empathy for him). 

“Do you guys ever get tired of the desert?” Joe asks, all tact as usual.

“No,” says Poison. “I love it. Once you’ve been inside Bat City all you want is space. And color.”

Joe nods.

“And music of course,” Fun Ghoul says. “The louder, the better.”

“That’s pretty much his criteria for judgement,” Poison says, and the two grin at each other with the ease of a long partnership. 

At last they pull up to a tower block, and a change comes over Poison. The anxious, withdrawn persona is back – he looks down, out the window, at his hands, anywhere except Fun Ghoul or the building. Ghoul is driving, and he casts a glance at Poison before pulling up. Maybe he makes some gesture – it’s hard to tell from the back – but Poison looks away and opens the door, and they all jump down. The building is surrounded by a wall, topped with curls of barbed wire. The guards nod to Poison and Ghoul though, and stand aside to let them enter. Patrick looks up – and up.

“We’ve been working on this place for a while,” Ghoul says with a grin. “One of the few things all the gangs can co-operate on.”

Patrick nods and follows them into the building. It was clearly a lab at one point – tiled floors chipped and dirty now, wires visible in the walls – and through to what looks like a cross between the inside of a hard drive and a surgery. The walls are mostly computer parts, and the floor is taken up by a series of metal tables fitted out with restraints for wrists and ankles. There are metal helmets fitted with sensors at the headrests.

“Super,” says Joe: “That’s not alarming in any way.”

Kobra does his weird half-smile and hops up onto one of the benches. “You should stay behind,” he says to Joe: “To help navigate. From there-“ he points to a bank of monitors: “Fun Ghoul and Jet will have an overview of the space, but inside the map you can only see what’s in front of you.”

Joe looks torn: clearly, he doesn’t want to come over as not pulling his weight, but on the other hand, he’s not a pilot. 

“Stay,” Andy says to him. “One of us should stay anyway, in case something happens to us inside BL/INDspace.”

Joe nods and heads to the monitors with a look of relief. Patrick and Andy get up on the horrible metal slabs, and Poison and Fun Ghoul help them with the straps.

“Think of it as a VR game,” says Fun Ghoul cheerfully: “Except don’t die. No extra lives.”

“Thanks,” says Andy.

“You’re welcome,” says Fun Ghoul with complete sincerity.

“Ready?” Jet angles the helmet-thing above Patrick’s head. It’s attached to a series of wires, plus a rubber tube that all route around the room and connect to the bouts of   
computers.

“As I’ll ever be,” says Patrick.

“We’ll be with you the whole time,” says Jet, and lowers the helment over his eyes. Patrick’s world goes dark.

First, there’s just blankness. The darkness is so total Patrick blinks a couple of times to make sure his eyes are still open. He can still hear motion from the rest of the room so he guesses nothing has happened yet. He takes a couple of deep breath. Then his vision flickers, like a vidscreen with poor connection, and a line of white static bisects the darkness. 

“Alright Patrick, you’re in,” - that’s Jet’s voice in his right ear. He jumps at the sound. Jumps? Yes, because he looks down, and his body has rematerialized, standing on nothing. He’s wearing an old sweatshirt he left on earth during a visit to his parents, and a pair of jeans torn at the knees that he’s had since the Academy. To his left is Andy, or the image of Andy – his hair is a good two inches longer than in the physical realm, and he’s wearing a pair of glasses, the type that were used to correct vision before surgery became ubiquitous. To his right are Kobra and Poison, who look exactly the same, down to the outfit. It occurs to Patrick suddenly that he’s never seen Kobra change clothes.   
The space in front of them flickers, then resolves itself into a door. Just a door – no fancy barriers or bulwarks to pass. As they walk towards it, a keypad materializes in midair:

ENTER CODE, it flashes

“Enter 321,” says Jet’s voice.

“321?” says Jet. “Seriously?”

“That’s not the code, we’ve hacked it,” says Kobra. “Quickly, before they find the hole.”

Patrick touches the glowing numbers, and the flashes ‘---‘ a couple of times, then warns

RETINA SCAN.

“Walk forwards,” says Fun Ghoul’s voice.

“Walk forwards?”

“Seriously, just do it.”

Patrick walks forwards, fully expecting the door to remain closed. Which it does, but instead of coming up hard against it, one second he’s walking on empty space with the door   
in front of him, and the next, he’s on the other side. 

If their mission is to find the central computer, that’s going to be complicated, because being in BL/INDSpace is a bit like _being_ in a giant computer. If said computer were   
a massive, complex office block. The walls are circuit boards, held together by cables, the floor appears to be made of memory cards and data chips. Elevators like see-through capsules whizz up and down between the floors. And there are Dracs everywhere. Buzzing back and forth and up and down in the lifts, moving like ants in columns.

“They can’t see you,” says Jet Star. “So long as our shields hold.”

Patrick nods before remembering Jet can’t hear him. “Got it,” he says.

“We need to take the main elevator to the tenth floor,” Poison says. “That’s the bay. We’ll go two to a shuttle – the central computer is only available by air.”

“Hope you’re ready for some fancy flying boys,” – that was Fun Ghoul. 

“That one,” Kobra supplies, pointing to large central tube with see-through capsules whizzing up and down it. They move forward and wait until one of the capsules becomes available, and climb in. Patrick has never seen so many Dracs up close before. It’s kind of scary, and kind of fascinating. They remind him of ants, or worker bees – some kind of insect/hive mentality where they all move at the prompting of one central brain.

“They _do_ behave like a virus,” Andy murmurs quietly, as the capsule speeds up – and up. Patrick raises his eyes, and realises for the first time how truly enormous   
BL/INDspace is. It goes on forever. Patrick guesses that’s one benefit of existing in virtual reality. Floor after floor whizzes by – every so often, Terminators rumble past with their searching eyes, and despite Poison’s words, Patrick shrinks towards the back of the capsule, sure they’re about to be found out. 

“Here we go,” says Kobra, as the capsule slows. He moves for the doors and, for a fraction of a second, seems to _flicker_ in Patrick’s vision. Patrick frowns. It’s a trick of   
BL/INDspace, of course. It has to be. “Central computer should be just down that corridor.” They enter a gleaming white corridor. Just then Fun Ghoul says in Patrick’s ear:

“Keep it moving guys, there’s a tracker bot onto us.”

“Shit,” says Andy and they pick up the pace. Patrick looks around anxiously:

“You can’t see it,” says Kobra, which makes it worse, and they follow him as he moves quickly down the corridor. They go through a series of metal arches which beep as they pass, and finally come to a huge metal door. Scanners move down like reverse periscopes and yes – that time, _Kobra definitely flickered_. Patrick looks down - he’s not flickering, and nor are Andy and Poison, and Andy has seen it too – he looks at Patrick, Patrick looks back, but they have no time to say anything before the door opens and they’re inside the bay. Lines and lines of small like shuttles are parked up and down the walls, with several more in mid-air maneuvering, or coming and going by a portal in the far wall.

“Patrick, you’re with me,” says Poison, and Patrick tries not to be pleased. He could trust himself to fly with Kobra. Obviously. But the closer he is to him, the more his terror for   
Pete pushes up from inside and distracts him. Patrick processes terror as rage. They split into pairs and appropriate two of the sleek black shuttlepods. 

“Can you fly this?” Poison asks.

“Yes,” Patrick says, looking over the controls. He makes a series of rapid mental adjustments. He can fly this. Probably. Then: “Shit,” as the pod lurches forwards and up: “Wait,   
wait, I’ve got it.”

“Guys,” Fun Ghoul’s voice is tense and hard: “They’ve found your trail. Terminators are locked on and catching up to you, move it.”

The pod surges up and swerves in mid-air, then Patrick gets control and they gain some altitude. Below them, Kobra and Andy are heading for the exit already. They follow. The   
controls fall into place under Patrick’s hands as the portal door opens.

“What’s the sitch, guys?” Poison asks, and it takes Patrick a second to realize he’s talking to Jet and Fun Ghoul:

“About three minutes behind you,” says Jet.

“We can make it,” says Poison. They glide through the portal, into darkness. Patrick blinks to adjust. They’re in a vast chamber, filled with databanks and what look like enormous   
harddrives. 

“Look up,” says Poison, and there it is: the central computer. Housed in a glass cylinder, it looks miles above them, clearly inaccessible except by the shuttlepods, though there are   
walkways built further up at the sides of the chambers, Dracs milling back and forth. A million wires and cables run in and out of the chamber, and an enormous print of the   
BL/IND logo takes up the far wall. 

“Uh, guys,” says Jet tensely, “Don’t want to alarm you, but –“

And at that moment, a siren blares, red lights start flashing and sweeping around the chamber.

“Get us up,” Poison urges: “Make for the central walkway.”

Kobra and Andy are already moving upwards, so Patrick follows them. Searchlights sweep around the chamber:

“Avoid their beams!” Poison yells over the alarm, and Patrick swerves left, then right, desperately trying to keep them out of the sensors. Beams sweep over and under them, but Patrick’s training kicks in and they gain height, finally reaching the walkway near the top of the massive computer. Andy and Kobra are disembarking already. All around the computer are Dracs working on pullout keyboards, though some have stopped in response to the alarm and are looking all around frantically, running back and forth and leaving their keyboards unattended.

“What do we do?” yells Patrick over the noise.

“This,” says Poison, he and Kobra pull out keyboards and Andy grabs one that a Drac has abandoned, and start feverishly typing. 

“Um, guys,” says Jet tensely in Patrick’s ear – 

\- And then a search beam locks onto them. 

 

“Shit,” whispers Patrick. He looks to Andy, who’s as frozen as he is. The siren reaches a steady pitch and stays there. In seconds, they’re surrounded by Terminators.

‘Well,’ thinks Patrick. ‘Well.’

“It’s been a fun ride, guys,” says Andy calmly. “Glad to know you all.”

But Patrick’s looking past him. He’s looking at Kobra, at the in-space image of Kobra which is flickering steadily now. Obviously. Poison’s looking at him too, wide-eyed and sad, and he says:

“No,”

And Kobra says:

“You know I have to Gee.”

And Poison says:

“I can’t do it without you,” and his voice breaks.

“But you have been,” says Kobra: “You have been doing it.” He steps towards his brother – and flickers. “You know what this is. You knew this was coming.”

And Poison stares at him, eyes huge and watery and reaches out his hand. Kobra takes it – but his hand flickers right through Poison’s. Poison takes a deep, uneven breath, looks at Kobra, looks at the computer, and says: “Okay.”

“I’ll get-“ Kobra hesitates. “If there’s any way I can get a message to you –“

“If you still exist! Mikey, you’ll be obliterated!”

“Oh I don’t know,” Kobra says with a crooked smile: “BL/IND haven’t found a way to get rid of me yet,” reaches out, touches a USB port – and disappears.  
Poison’s face crumples.

“What the fuck?!” Andy asks, as the siren reaches fever pitch, _screech screech screech_ , and the whole world flickers, sways in and out of focus like they’ve been plunged beneath the sea. Everything turns to static and the walls and the walkway are a scrambled mess of pixels, then resolve again, then unresolved, Fun Ghoul and Jet are both shouting in their ears at the same time but their voices are warped, Patrick can’t tell what they’re saying, and then

A Terminator is directly in front of him, sighting Patrick down the barrel of his massive gun.

“Shit,” says Patrick.

The Terminator fires.


	6. Chapter 6

Static. 

Static above, static below. There’s no pain, which Patrick guesses is good, except he’s not entirely sure he has a body, which is bad. He looks up. What is up? Blank space. Down. More blank. Is he stuck? Is this what Jet warned him about before, that his mind could be stuck in BL/INDspace whilst his body rotted? But this isn’t BL/INDspace. BL/INDspace is _gone_.  
Didn’t the Terminator shoot? 

Where are the others?

*

Crackling. Interruptions in the static. Like a really bad vid connection. Patrick strains to catch it:

“-- ick, -- ear e? –et --- ere. The ---“

‘Jet?’ Patrick tries to call because it sounds like Jet, but he doesn’t have a voice, doesn’t have a voicebox.

“ –ing on it. -----ay out.”

‘JET’ Patrick tries again, futile, but its reflex – how long has he been stuck here, wherever this is? What if they can’t get him out? He tells himself not to panic, that won’t help, but visions of an unmeasured future stretch out in front him - he’ll go insane. Maybe he’s _gone_ insane, and this is all a hallucination. Jet’s voice crackles out again. Patrick feels like crying.

*

Time might be passing. It’s hard to say.

*

 

“Got him!”

Fun Ghoul’s voice is the first thing he hears when he comes back – and he is back, back in his body, with a flood of sensations as suddenly Patrick has hands and feet, arms and legs, lungs and a heart, and a head. His head is pounding, actually, and Fun Ghoul isn’t helping –

\- “PATRICK! Hey Patrick, are you in there?!”

Patrick groans and tries to shove the headset off, but his arms are held. Someone comes over and starts undoing the straps at his wrists – Jet, he thinks.

“You okay Patrick?” Jet asks.

“Yeah,” Patrick blinks and tries to clear his throat. “What, uh, what-…” 

“Wait a sec,” says Jet kindly, and helps Patrick remove the headset. “Have something to drink first, you’ve been gone awhile.”

“Gone? Where was – where is –?” Patrick realises his throat his completely dry, and takes the bottle of some energy drink Jet’s offering. To his surprise, there’s an IV port in his right hand:

“We had to give you some water,” Fun Ghoul explains. “You were trapped for three days.”

“Oh,” says Patrick, and looks down. His hands are shaking. He gets the bottle cap open and takes several long drinks. Then he looks around. The other tables are empty. “Andy?” he asks, alarmed.

“Hi,” says Andy, appearing in the doorway – he’s shaved and changed and relief washes over Patrick, then a deep wave of disorientation. “When BL/INDspace collapsed, it caused a temporary rift,” says Jet.

“BL – BL/INDspace collapsed?”

“Yep,” Jet smiles sadly. 

“Kobra,” Patrick says suddenly. “He – what did he do? He’s gone, he….”

“He was already gone, Patrick,” says Jet. “We didn’t know it was possible. Come on, why don’t you get cleaned up and have something to eat and drink, and we’ll fill you in on everything.”

“But first,” says Andy, “There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

And a tinny echo of Pete’s voice says: “Is that Patrick? Andy, put him on. Patrick, are you there? Talk to meeee!”

“Pete?” says Patrick in disbelief. He sits straight up, his head swims and he grabs the edge of the table. Andy hands him his communicator.

“Trick!” says Pete. “Are you okay? They wouldn’t let me talk to you, you were stuck in BL/INDspace, no-one would say it but I knew what was going on. Where are you? Why aren’t you here?”

“Pete,” says Patrick, and to his mortification he finds his voice is breaking. He coughs and tries to cover it – Jet and Andy look away politely as he composes himself. “Are you okay?”

“I asked you first.”

“I’m fine, I’m,” he laughs a little. “I think we did it, Pete. The central computer, it…”

“I know,” says Pete warmly. His voice brims with pride: “You’re a hero, Pattycakes. BL/IND is in crisis. Now get back here and celebrate with me, they won’t let me travel.”

“I should think not,” says Patrick, and laughs again. “Pete, you nearly died. Why did you – “And then he thinks of Kobra, and something cold washes over him, and he says, “I’ll be there soon. Be careful, do what the doctor says.”

Pete makes a noise of frustration like _ughh_ and complains, “They won’t let me do anything. Hurry, I’ll die of boredom and then all the Doc’s work will be wasted because I’ll be dead.”

Patrick wants to say, _I love you, I can’t wait to be with you_ , but he’s just not the kind of guy who can say that in front of people, so he just says, “See you soon,” and gives the communicator back to Andy, before following Jet through to one of the kitchen areas attached to a row of terminals. He gets watered, fed, and drinks two mugs of industrial strength coffee, feeling his brain come back online as sensation gradually returns to his extremities. Everything hurts in a lowkey kind of way, but he guesses being strapped to a table for three days will do that to you. All the while Jet watches, calm and sympathetic. Patrick splashes water on his face and arms, and pats himself dry with a rough towel. 

“I want to see Pete,” he says.

“Show Pony’s bringing the trans-am,” says Jet. “You can go back together.”

Patrick nods, then takes the seat Jet is offering him at the table.

“So,” Jet says: “I guess you’re wondering….”

“What happened to Kobra?” Patrick says. “Did we break BL/INDspace? He uh, what did he do?”

“Crashed the central computer. The Dracs are useless. Bat City is haemorrhaging runaways. More people have joined the Zonerunner movement in the past three days than they have since Bat City was founded. The leaders have declared a state of emergency. The cities are in revolt.”

Patrick nods, trying to absorb it. “But Kobra….”

“Kobra’s gone.” Jet closes his eyes for a moment. “Or I guess what I should say is – Kobra wasn’t here to begin with.”

Patrick stares.

“The – what you knew as Kobra,” Jet says carefully. “That was a program. An AI double,” he spreads his hands. “It turns out material can move in and out of BL/INDspace after all.”

“A – double?”

“Kobra programmed it. Remember we told you – a few years ago, he almost didn’t come back from BL/INDspace? As it turns out – he didn’t. Once he knew he was trapped – that he wouldn’t be coming back – he found a way to send _that_ back. In order to crash the computer, he had to get back inside the system. When it crashed, it took his program with it.” He shakes his head and adds: “I don’t think he’s coming back this time,” in a smaller, perplexed voice.

“And you didn’t know? All the time the AI was here? You didn’t know?”

“How could we know? It’s a perfect replica. A duplicate of the original article with all memories uploaded. He did it for Poison’s sake.”

_I can’t do it without you…._

_But you have been…. You know what this is. You knew this was coming._

Patrick remembers all the times Kobra had denied that anything material crosses in and out of BL/INDspace. He wonders what Jet is feeling right now. Betrayed? He doesn’t look betrayed. He looks sad.

“Poison,” says Patrick.

“Poison knew,” Jet affirms. “At least on some level. I don’t know how consciously he knew it, I guess – I guess that’s something we’ll have to talk about. I suppose we’ve all been a bit in denial – Poison for obvious reasons, and the rest of us for pretending he’s – he’s - saner than he is.” Patrick nods and clears his throat.

“So what happens now?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Jet looks out of the window for a second. “We regroup, I guess. We’ve just dealt BL/IND a major blow and we should be happy about that. It will take them time to recover from this. But on the other hand…”

On the other hand, he doesn’t say, our leader is much, much more delusional we thought.

Patrick sighs and pushes his plate aside. He’s done. He should be ravenous after three days, but suddenly can’t finish. 

“I want to back,” he says again. 

“Sure,” says Jet. “I’ll see if I can contact Show Pony for an ETA.”

Show Pony turns up within the hour and drives Patrick and Andy back to the shack. Patrick has a million questions, but none of them seem polite or appropriate, so he keeps to himself, now and then trying to hail the ship with his communicator. He can’t get a signal. Show Pony sees what he’s doing and says:

“Your friends are up to date, more or less. Pete and Joe made contact after we got you back.”

“Oh that’s good,” Patrick breaths. Then: “Show Pony? Where _was_ I? After BL/INDspace I mean? Where was that place I was sent to?

Show Pony turns their head to look at him through the visor, then says after a long moment:

“You tell me.”

After what seems like hours in the desert heat, the van pulls up at the radio shack. Excitement bubbles up in Patrick and he can’t help grinning, he hops down, and schools himself to walk normally inside. He maybe speeds up a bit on the last few   
steps but really, who can blame him.

Pete looks like shit – worse than Patrick has ever seen him, really pale and somehow fragile looking, diminished. He beams when he sees Patrick, and Patrick feels a huge rush of something he’s not used to, affection and protection and – love. ‘If   
this isn’t love,’ he thinks before he can stop himself, ‘I don’t know what love is’, and kind of wants to punch himself in the face because really, really, brain? He leans over to hug Pete, who’s ensconced in the battered couch – Pete immediately starts trying to make out with him, and Patrick says

“Jesus, Pete, no, wait, you’re not ready,” and pushes him back gently, and Pete says

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Absolutely not,” says Patrick, and the truth is Pete is already out of breath from that tiny exertion, so Patrick sits down next to him and folds his hands in his lap, because he doesn’t do PDA and Show Pony and Andy are still standing there, and Dr.   
D. wheels his way in with interest, and now Joe’s here too, okay. Pete takes advantage of Patrick’s distraction with one more good-faith attempt to stick his tongue in his mouth, but Patrick dodges.

“So I hear you’re a hero.” Says Dr. D.

“Yeah!” says Pete. “What are you doing having adventures without me? I did not approve this.”

“You weren’t really in a state to be approving much.” 

“Tell me everything,” Pete demands, “How did you do it?” and Patrick looks at him, looks at Dr. D, and realises he doesn’t know. They’ve left it for Patrick to tell him – or not tell him. Maybe. Not until he’s better. After all, Pete got shot to protect   
Kobra, what he thought was Kobra, the person he apparently had this history with – and it turned out to be an illusion all along. If AI material duplicates are illusions. That kind of philosophical question is more Andy’s department. But then Patrick looks at Pete’s big earnest eyes and he can’t lie to him, never could, not even by omission and not even when it would be best for both for of them. So he clears his throat and looks at his hands and says, “Pete, I have bad news.”

*

All four of them stand out to watch as their ship enters the atmosphere, gliding easily in to land in the old port. Pete is leaning on Patrick and Andy hard and trying not to show it. Patrick wants him to be sitting down indoors but he’s being a shit as usual, insisting he’s meeting Will and Travie off the deck, and telling everyone he’s fine when they demand details of what happened to him. The news about Kobra shook him, Patrick could tell, but he’d just stared at him for a while and then said,

“Okay,” and Patrick had said,

“Okay?! What – what do you mean okay?”

And Pete looked at him with grave, tired eyes, and Patrick thought of the expanse of history they didn’t share, and how there would always be things about Pete he wasn’t entitled to. 

_You knew that was the deal when you married me_.

Very late that night, and for once Patrick’s the one who couldn’t sleep. Pete was taking antibiotics – under pressure from Andy and Patrick – which made him tireder, and Patrick felt too hot and then the mattress was uncomfortable after so many days away, and he ended up tossing and turning for a bit before giving up and heading for the rec room. He heads for one of the personal vidscreens, thinking he’ll fire off a message to Brendon and see if he’s awake.

Maja’s sitting by the window, watching him.

“Oh,” says Patrick. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting,” she says, and almost smiles.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll just –“

“Wait,” she says and holds his gaze: “Why do I make you so uncomfortable?”

“What do you want me to say?” Patrick asks. “That you were right? That I’m a danger to have around because Pete takes stupid risks around me? It wasn’t even me he risked his life for if you must know. It was – someone else.”

“I know what happened,” she says calmly. He doesn’t ask how she knows. Or doubt it. She just looks at him. “I’m glad you’re here, anyway.”

“So – why?” He’s tired. “So I can resubmit my application for your approval of me?” 

“I wanted to thank you.”

“I – wait, what?”

“I think you kept Pete as safe as anyone could have.”

Patrick narrows his eyes. “I’m not his bodyguard.”

“No. But you protected him, and kept him alive, and made some difficult decisions that worked out. So,” she shrugs, an elegant movement, then meets his eyes and says: “I have a good life and agency here, and I owe him a lot.” It looks like it pains   
her to say it, a bit, and he thought she was going to say ‘my life’, but whether that’s true or isn’t true, she’s certainly never telling him.

“Okay,” he says, “Well – okay.” And can’t help feeling that he _did_ just reapply for her approval, and got it, and damn, he’s kind of pleased about that. She offers him a little smile – one corner of her mouth, then turns and walks past him and out of the rec room. 

He’s done with sleep for the night.

*  
After that, things go back to normal. Kind of. Pete doesn’t talk about Kobra to Patrick and Patrick doesn’t ask. Maybe he’s a bad person. 

Patrick talks to Brendon who enthusiastically mines him for details of the Zonerunner movement:

“I don’t know how far we even helped, to be honest,” Patrick shrugs. “I mean, Andy helped make the hole into BL/INDspace, and we did the hard piloting inside.”

“So you did help, totally.”

“I still feel like the Killjoys did most of the real work. It’s -its impressive.” He goes on a bit but dodges and avoids when Brendon wants to hear about Party Poison.

“What’s he _like_ , though?” Brendon practically whines. “You haven’t told me anything.”

“He’s -….” Patrick gives up and passes the buck without shame: “Ask Pete.”

“PATRICK ARE YOU TALKING TO BRENDON AGAIN? LET ME TALK TO HIM.”

“Here you go.”

Jet keeps in contact with Patrick. Now and again he’ll send updates or pictures of what’s happening on-planet: BL/INDspace is up again, naturally, but the computer took major damage when Kobra’s sim crashed it and lost a whole lot of capability.   
The Dracs are returning to functionality, but its slow. Meanwhile, the Zonerunner movement is expanding faster than it ever has – tent cities and shanty towns sprouting in the desert, faster than BL/IND can regain hold on their consciousness.

“Patrick.”

“What?”

01:22, and Pete has resumed his role as the insomniac as the pair.

“Do you think we’ve changed our policy? On non-interference.”

Patrick squints at him. “We don’t have a policy, Pete. We live on a ship and wander around undertaking ill-advised adventures on a case-by-case basis. I don’t know how this is my life. You made this my life.”

“You wanted it,” Pete says, then: “Ha ha ha. Wanted it.”

Patrick closes his eyes. “Go to sleep please.”

“No, but do you think we should have a policy? Like, a mission?”

Patrick pulls his pillow over his head.

“I’m going to write something,” Pete says: “You can help.”

“That’s great. I’m not listening anymore.”

“Yeah you are,” Pete says warmly. “You can’t help it. That’s why I love you the most, Patrick.”

And Goddamit, there are things he can’t have in this life and things he can, and the truth is there’s a lot about Pete he will never learn, but he can believe Pete when he tells him he loves Patrick most, and he does believe him.

It’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finis!
> 
> NB: Everything regarding AI, virtual environments and technology in this story has been entirely pulled out of my ass/derived from _The Matrix_ , and probably bears no relation whatsoever to anything that is or could be possible. Also, when I was in the middle of writing the reunion scene, I walked away from my computer and when I came back my cat had written AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW with her paw. I shit you not. Finally, thanks to all you guys for reading and commenting on this story. I'm having a pretty bad time right now with ill-health/insomnia/being across the country from my family and friends on an amazing two-year lectureship, which is duly amazing, but doesn't make living away on my own any easier. (Shockingly, my area is not computer technology XD). Seeing you guys read and enjoy has been a bright spot in my day for the past few weeks and I hope it's brought you the pleasure it's brought me. I may return to this universe if I get more ideas for it, it's been a lot of fun.


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